Farmers urged to be on constant alert for disease
Vets say early detection on farms is the best defence against disease, writes Jill Galloway The first line of biosecurity defence is farmers looking at their stock to spot a new disease.
That is what Australian vet Angus Cameron told about 100 people at last week’s New Zealand Veterinary Association conference held at Massey University.
‘‘First passive reporting by people on the ground is immediate and we rely on it,’’ he said.
Cameron said a farmer would notice if a cow or sheep was lame and drooling, so something like foot and mouth could be found on farms first.
‘‘It’s a farmer who sees a problem and goes to a vet to try to do something about it.’’
He said what was done with that information further up the chain was vital, too.
‘‘It needs to be verified and go into a database where people can make decisions about it.’’
He said there were ‘‘lots of fancy things that people have come up with to gather [surveillance] information . . . but some of the surveillance jobs we have require early detection.
‘‘All the time and everywhere, the only way we can get that surveillance and afford it is to rely on the farmers. I stress that all the time.
‘‘But we can make it better, by identifying groups that are not playing their part because there are farmers who don’t know what to look for.’’
They needed to be targeted and educated, he said.
Cameron lives in France but is part of Aus Vet, a company based in Australia.
He said there had been incursions, such as PSA and varroa in New Zealand, and equine influenza in Australia – but both countries remained the envy of the world for their border protection.
‘‘Because we are island nations, we export and we take biosecurity seriously. Agriculture is a very
A woman walks past livestock that died from foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), outside a veterinary centre in Egypt last year. New Zealand’s border security is ‘‘the envy of the world’’ but diseases still make their way here. Photo: Reuters important part of both economies. I travel to a lot of places and nowhere else do I see the border controls we see here.’’
Cameron said that although we were seeing more air travel now, animal disease was not greatly influenced by more people travelling.
‘‘And the border protections are probably working pretty well.’’