Test needs to be ‘fit for purpose’

A commercial test for Mycoplasma bovis would need to be fit for purpose before it was made available commercially, says the Southland Federated Farmers president.

The Ministry for Primary Industries is working with industry partners and commercial laboratories to develop a commercial diagnostic tool for the cow disease.

The disease, that causes conditions in cattle including mastitis, pneumonia, arthritis and late-term abortions, was first identified on three Winton farms in December 2017.

The hope is that a new test would speed up lengthy official tests, but its release has more hurdles yet to pass.

It would not be a do-it-yourself test but farmers could commission veterinarians to carry it out.

Before the tool is released it must meet sampling guidelines, a testing strategy and possibly an accreditation programme to ensure it is accurately used and interpreted.

Southland Federated Farmers president Allan Baird said developing a commercial test was the next step for managing the disease and part of trying to get normality back into cattle trading, in particular, breeding stock.

‘‘It’s all about confidence, and if you’re a bull breeder looking to sell to others then they need to have confidence’’.

Some farmers will buy low price cattle if they do not think the risk is too great to their herds, Baird said.

There was still uncertainty amongst farmers and it would be at least 12 months or longer before their confidence was back, he said.

While some farmers might be frustrated with the wait times, with some of the testing they needed to understand that the disease was quite new to the country, Baird said.

Many other countries had been dealing with the disease for a long time and still not had figured out a way to easily detect it, or had invented a vaccine, he said. ‘‘This test needs to be fit for purpose.’’

Southland VetSouth director Mark Bryan said before any commercially available tests were made available to the public, it would need to deliver robust results.

Everybody wanted a test but the ministry would have to go through the process to ensure it did the job, Bryan said.

‘‘It would be really, really good if we could commercially help farmers in terms of testing stock coming on to their properties.’’

When asked if he was concerned about a sudden demand being placed on veterinary services for testing, Bryan said the ministry had already done the vast majority of testing. ‘‘By the time MPI ramp back their tests, they’ve taken a lot of the question marks away from farmers.’’

A lot of farmers would want the test, but before they went ahead VetSouth would take the farmers through a biosecurity risk assessment first to establish whether to see whether it was worth testing, Bryan said.

For the vast majority of farmers the risk was low, he said.

Out of all the properties were tested in Southland, only 13 were infected properties, he said.