Heed the Mycoplasma bovis warning
In a vacuum of reliable information, rumour and innuendo grow like fungi in a dark place. Sifting through the morass of rumour and conjecture surrounding the cattle disease Mycoplasma bovis is a herculean task which should have been started soon after it was first officially notified on a South Canterbury farm in July last year. Since then the disease, which can only be spread by cattle, has been discovered over a vast area of the country, including most recently in Waikato.
To their credit, Prime Minster Jacinda Ardern and Agriculture and Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor (no relation, for those who asked the question last week) have tackled this serious and challenging issue head on with a promise of a decision on the way forward on Monday.
There are only two real options and both come with significant financial and emotional costs to farmers directly affected and to the country has a whole.
The first attempted option was immediate eradication, but it was probably far too late by the time that decision was made, as infected cattle had already been sold and sent to many parts of the country in the normal course of farm trading and stock sales.
Unlike bovine TB, there are no reliable tests for individual animals infected with M bovis. And they show no symptoms until they come under the stress of difficult calving, feed shortage or another disease. Those symptoms include lameness, ill-thrift and mastitis, which are common and easily treatable conditions familiar to all dairy farmers. With TB, only animals returning a positive diagnostic test are sent for slaughter. There is a blood test for M bovis, but it is not very reliable, so the only indication that a herd is infected is by the routine test of the milk picked up by tanker. A positive test condemns the entire herd to be culled.
It is difficult to explain to non-farming people what it means to dairy farmers to have their healthy cows taken from them to be slaughtered when only one might be infected. Apart from the huge financial loss and massive interruption to a very busy lifestyle, the loss of their cows, many of which they have hand-reared and nursed through difficult calvings and various illnesses, is a gut-wrenching tragedy. There is also the loss of many generations of line-breeding which no monetary compensation can replace. Innocent farmers caught up in this saga have complied with the myriad regulations required of them only to have it all taken from them by events they had no part in or the actions of others they had no control over.
The failure of some farmers to maintain proper stock movement records is one of many contributing factors to a totally avoidable disaster for many farming families. Their anguish and anger are as real as it gets, as are their demands for answers.
But, thus far, there are none to give them.
The second option is management, in the same way we manage Bovine TB. That will require the development of a reliable testing regime, with only infected cows sent for slaughter and proper compensation paid. That will remove the need for whole herds to be killed and will reportedly initially cost about the same as eradication. It is easily the more sensible and humane option we have.
Once the decision on managing the disease has been made, we are still faced with the how and who questions. Of these, identifying how it got here is paramount. There is no point in attempting eradication if the way it got here is not clearly identified and measures to prevent future intrusions are put in place.
Establishing who brought the disease into the country is of secondary importance and, while there are those who have said there is nothing to be gained in naming and shaming, it is essential to establish if there was criminality involved in either importations of untested bull semen or embryos and if there was any delay in reporting the disease, which now appears to have been identified in Southland about two years before it was officially reported in South Canterbury.
The biosecurity regulations and compliance regimes of the Ministry for Primary Industries seem to have been sadly lacking in firstly allowing the disease to slip through undetected, and secondly in not being able to quickly and accurately trace potentially infected animals. Taxpayers who will pick up the massive bill for these shortcomings have a right to expect a great better than that.