150,000 cows to be culled

The Government says it has one last shot at eradicating the country of Mycoplasma Bovis and it’s going to try.

Cabinet decided yesterday to push ahead with ridding New Zealand of the cattle disease, which is on a scale never faced before.

Phased eradication could involve up to 190 properties out of more than 20,000 dairy and beef farms. It’s expected that an extra 126,000 livestock will need to be culled on top of the 26,000 already earmarked for slaughter.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor said the decision to not switch to a management and containment plan was made collectively with farming sector bodies after months of intense analysis to understand the likely impact of M bovis.

‘‘Speaking with affected farmers in recent weeks, it is obvious that this has taken a toll but standing back and allowing the disease to spread would simply create more anxiety for all farmers,’’ Ardern said.

While it was an ‘‘ambitious plan’’, she didn’t want to end up in a situation where she looked back and said ‘‘I wish we had tried harder’’.

Phased eradication involves culling cattle on all infected properties and ‘‘high-risk’’ properties – the bulk of that culling would be done in the next one to two years.

The full cost of eradication over 10 years is estimated at $886 million. Of this, $16m is loss of production and will be ‘‘borne by farmers’’.

The response, including compensation, is forecast to cost $870m and the Government will meet 68 per cent of the cost while Dairy NZ and Beef+Lamb New Zealand will meet 32 per cent.

Ardern said the Government had prepared for a ‘‘rainy day’’ in the Budget and was able to ‘‘carry a load like this’’.

O’Connor made a guarantee that affected farmers would receive a substantial amount of their compensation within ten days of a claim being made.

‘‘We’re speeding up the process to ensure nobody is squeezed financially as a result of this process.’’

Unfortunately ‘‘mass culls

are necessary’’ because of the difficulty testing and identifying stock with the disease. As a result herds were having to be culled, which included many cows that did not have M bovis.

The alternative option was for long-term management, which was projected at $1.2 billion, and if nothing was done at all, it’s estimated the cost to industry would be about $1.3b in lost production over the next decade.

Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) director of response Geoff Gwyn said it had become clear this disease outbreak was ‘‘one incursion and connected by the same network’’.

Spring testing this year will provide an opportunity to reassess whether eradication is working – the results of which will come back in by December.

There is no cut-off point for the Government and the farming sector in terms of how many cows would need to be culled.

Providing any new infected farms were still part of the original M bovis network, then culling would continue as long as necessary.

MPI expects more farms will be identified after spring testing but if they were part of the same network then eradication would still be achievable. A ‘‘new cluster of farms’’ would mean eradication plans weren’t working, Gwyn said.

All infected farms found in the future will be depopulated, with disinfected properties given a 60-day stand-down period before they could be restocked.

Federated Farmers supports the decision to try and eradicate but is well aware it will cause pain and anguish for farmers.

President Katie Milne said getting rid of the disease was preferable to living with it for years on end. ‘‘Now we have to crack on and give it our best shot to recover from this threat.’’