Bacterial infection likely cause of semen quality problems
Federated Farmers is calling on LIC (Livestock Improvement Corporation) to review its response to New Zealand farmers after 1127 herds were impacted by a semen quality issue.
The co-operative has conducted a review to understand what went wrong with on-farm inseminations in October last year and found bacterial contamination to be the possible cause of a low number of calves.
It’s committed to offering credit and goodwill packages to help farmers recover, but Federated Farmers Dairy Industry Group chairperson Richard McIntyre said they “fall short of what impacted farmers consider to be fair”.
While the situation was “unprecedented in scale”, LIC needed to review its response to make sure impacted farmers have the best opportunity to mitigate repercussions on the farm, he said.
“They also need to ensure there is a well understood process for financially contributing to losses from product or service failures,” McIntyre said.
LIC notified farmers of the quality issue when routine checks sparked concern with batches of fresh conventional Premier Sires straws inseminated on farms between October 17-19 and 23-25, 2023.
It was discovered that 20 batches were affected and 1127 herds across New Zealand were impacted to varying degrees.
LIC started an internal review on October 25, followed by an external review and chief executive David Chin said every possibility was investigated.
Multiple scenarios were recreated using the semen from the impacted days – which are routinely frozen and stored for research purposes, he said.
“While we were able to narrow it down to a possible cause, it was not possible to identify the exact root cause of the bacterial contamination.
“We considered every possibility, from the bull’s farm to on-farm insemination, and were able to rule out many possible causes by process of elimination.”
The independent review also said improvements were needed in managing risk, responding to events and communicating effectively and efficiently.
The co-operative was focusing on implementing recommendations from the review, and had already implemented daily quality checks, Chin said.
The corporation was committed to reducing the likelihood of an incident like this happening again, he said.
Farmers are being compensated based on the degree at which they have been affected.
They are being credited goodwill payments of $30 per insemination carried out over the six days, while all affected inseminations on October 18, 19, 24 and 25 are being credited an additional $30 per insemination.
Another $30 per insemination will be paid where 10% or more of a herd were inseminated on specific dates.
LIC has also committed to providing guidance for recovery and mating plans for the upcoming season through its agri managers.
McIntyre said that while it would have been great to have identified a definite cause of the product failure, “that’s not always possible”.
“It’s good to see that LIC is implementing changes to reduce the likelihood of this happening again, including improved testing to ensure any issues are picked up before they make it to the cow,” he said.
Chin will give farmer shareholders a live online update on the situation on March 5.
LIC is a farmer-owned herd improvement and agri-technology co-operative.