Feedback on ‘M. bovis’ sought

WORKSHOPS will be held next month to seek feedback from Mycoplasma bovisaffected farmers.

In its latest stakeholder update, the Ministry for Primary Industries said it had listened to calls from farmers to be more involved in aspects of the disease response.

The aim was to seek local feedback from farmers in and around the regional centres in Invercargill, Oamaru, Ashburton and Hamilton, so processes and outcomes could be further improved.

All on farms under restrictions for M. bovis would be invited to attend along with those on the 150 farms undergoing active surveillance.

The workshops followed on from two farmer workshops in Wellington in August and September.

Those provided the response team with ‘‘invaluable’’ firsthand feedback from farmers placed under restrictions for M. bovis ‘‘over the past year and a bit’’.

Their feedback had already been used to implement certain changes to improve farmers’ experiences.

Those changes included the recently created active surveillance team, whose job was to keep farms under surveillance uptodate as they progressed through the testing.

A dairy farm in Otago was the latest property to be confirmed as infected and tracing work from it was now under way.

For the first time since the response began, the number of farms which have had their infected property (IP) status revoked, 38, had now overtaken the total number of active IPs, which stood at 37.

While more new IPs would likely be found, the present tilt in numbers was a ‘‘welcome milestone’’ for the team as it continued testing of the traced farms.