Farmer claims K5 rabbit virus a failure
CROMWELL farmer Donald Young has implored the Otago Regional Council to import a new Australian strain of rabbit virus, saying the recently introduced K5 virus has been a failure.
Mr Young, whose Lowburn property was one of the first sites to get the virus earlier this year, was speaking at the Otago Federated Farmers annual meeting in Balclutha yesterday.
He had been in contact with farmers in Canterbury and ‘‘the story is just the same failure as Otago’’.
Landcare Research also seemed slow when field staff sent in blood samples for testing.
‘‘It took only three days to get results 21 years ago when RHD virus was found on my property. Now we are told to be patient, it might work.
‘‘The same virus took only 32 hours to kill the rabbits 21 years ago.’’
While farmers faced criticism in 1997 that the release was not done properly, it was ‘‘a hell of a lot better than this one’’, Mr Young said.
He believed RHDV2, which had just been released in the Alice Springs area, should be imported before the next breeding season.
Mr Young was also angry at what he called a ‘‘total lack of support and concern’’ the dedicated field staff and involved farmers had been shown by the regional council.
‘‘Both elected members and senior staff have a lot to answer for,’’ he said.
ORC chief executive Sarah Gardner said some areas had reported a 70% decline in rabbit numbers, but she was also aware results were patchy and there were reports that some areas had seen no change.
‘‘We are hopeful, but we know there have been mixed results and we know that there is further work to do,’’ she said.
It was suspected the reason for variation in death rates was in background immunity levels, but that would not be known for a while.
The virus was ‘‘never going to be a silver bullet’’ and it was important to use other, traditional means of rabbit control.
A campaign would be launched soon for owners of smaller properties, such as lifestyle blocks.
Mrs Gardner said she understood how frustrating it was and the council was ‘‘as concerned as anyone’’.
Field staff were ‘‘devastated’’ when nothing happened and she was sad to hear they did not feel supported, and would be following that up, she said.
THE Ministry for Primary Industries has not been ‘‘up to the job’’ when it comes to dealing with the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak, Federated Farmers national board member Miles Anderson believes.
Speaking at Otago Federated Farmers’ annual meeting in Balclutha yesterday, Mr Anderson said he was a ‘‘bit disappointed’’ in MPI’s response.
Once the outbreak was dealt with, industry needed to have a debriefing with MPI and work out how improvements could be made. ‘‘It’s currently not acceptable the way it’s going,’’ he said.
There were people with neighbouring properties that were infected who had not been informed, while there were other farmers who had cattle of interest to MPI who were unaware of that.
Communication needed to be worked on initially, Mr Anderson said.
There needed to be reflections on how the disease came to New Zealand in the first place and biosecurity at borders.
He was concerned at the number of biosecurity incursions in recent years, including pea weevil, velvet leaf and blackgrass, and that if something like scrapie or foot and mouth arrived ‘‘we mightn’t be able to cope’’.
Farmers needed to take some responsibility over the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) system.
It was under review and it was hoped the recommendations made would not only improve NAIT but also the ability of farmers to access stock records, as that would be very important, particularly with cattle, he said.
With the huge number of properties that were of interest, it was fast coming to the point where MPI would have to say it did not think it was going to be able to eradicate the disease and, in a very short time, work on containing and monitoring it, eradicating animals that had tested positive, rather thanwhole herds, he said.
It had been suggested that the original infection in Southland might have been in 2014 or 2015 and there had been many stock movements since then, he said.
New Zealand First list MP and Lawrence farmer Mark Patterson said the NAIT system had clearly failed, which needed to be addressed. Privacy laws around biosecurity also needed to be fitforpurpose.
The source of the breach needed to be found to prevent recurrences, and if it was found that individuals were to blame, they needed to be called to account, Mr Patterson said.