Eradication attack could carry $1b cost

A preferred option to continue to try to eradicate Mycoplasma bovis will be put to the Cabinet on Monday where a final decision will be made.

Sources have told Stuff that industry bodies and the Government have reached consensus that eradication is the best option as the country deals with a disease on a scale never faced before.

The Cabinet will be given options around eradication methods versus managing the problem, but it’s understood the Government will favour eradication because it’s the option most supported by farmers and industry groups.

This comes on the back of an expert briefing at Parliament yesterday about the extent of the problem and high-level meetings between the Government and industry over the last few days.

At the briefing media were told police have been issuing warrants to assist the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) with its investigation into how Mycoplasma bovis arrived.

"The police helped with issuing warrants to go and obtain information, the investigation is being undertaken by people within MPI, but the police will be called on when necessary,’’ O’Connor said.

MPI says police are not actively investigating. It is a requirement for police to be present while MPI staff execute the warrant, but they do not actively take part in the search.

The biggest factor in the disease spreading is through cattle movement but that hasn’t led to MPI halting farmers shifting stock during the change of season – ‘‘gypsy day’’ – on June 1.

O’Connor said a lock-down of stock was considered but ultimately it would lead to animal welfare issues because cattle needed to be moved to get to where the feed is.

That meant there would be heightened checks on tracking where stock are going, that clean and sterilised trucks are used for transportation and possible infected farms and animals aren’t being mixed with disease-free ones.

‘‘In the end it’s animal welfare. We have farmers crying out for decision and clarity because they don’t have enough feed for their stock,’’ O’Connor said.

While gypsy day does ‘‘pose some risk, it doesn’t cause the level of risk that would require us to make quite drastic decisions about preventing all animal movement,’’ an MPI official said.

It’s likely as tracking and tracing continues more diseaseinfected farms and herds will be identified, O’Connor said.

National’s agriculture spokesman Nathan Guy said livestock is already being moved around the country and farmers are just looking for certainty around what stock movement is allowed, which he hopes will come from the Cabinet on Monday.

There’s no clear cost for eradication or managing the disease but a figure coming out of Australia is that it costs $60 million annually to manage the spread and O’Connor said ‘‘that’s probably in the ballpark’’.

Cost isn’t a factor in whether the Government chooses to try and continue to eradicate M Bovis versus managing the spread because both options would end up costing about the same amount – the estimate is about $1 billion over 10 years.

MPI officials said it’s unlikely they’ll be able to ‘‘definitively say’’ where the disease originated, but the genetics of the strain of M Bovis in New Zealand is being looked at, which is being mapped and will be able to be tied to a broad geographic area.

‘‘Indications at this stage are that it’s not the Australian strain, it’s more likely the European one,’’ O’Connor said.