Opinion
18 FARMERS WEEKLY – farmersweekly.co.nz – January 11, 2021
EDITORIAL New year brings new challenges
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NEW year has dawned but the hangover from 2020 is still very much here. The United Kingdom is going back into lockdown and the new covid variant is wreaking havoc. Once again New Zealanders can touch wood and be thankful the worst of the virus has been kept from our shores. Covid will continue to be the big story for everyone this year, food producers included. But there are other issues to keep an eye on. The UK finally has its trade deal with the European Union, but that doesn’t solve the quota issue for NZ red meat exporters. China continues to clap back at nations that criticise it. And, for now, Donald Trump is still in the White House and hasn’t shown any signs of leaving. Still, summer’s been pretty good here. Many regions are reporting good rainfall over the festive period and supplementary feed is plentiful. Last week’s Global Dairy Trade (GDT) auction boosted dairy commodity prices further and analysts are now looking forward to a payout in the mid-$7 region, which is great news. There are also signs that the global foodservice industry is coming back to life. Butter demand was up at the GDT and that may bode well for read meat exporters as well. As with any year, there will be big challenges. Understanding and adhering to new Government regulation will be foremost among them. And there’s always the spectre of new covid-19 transmission in the community here. So, 2021 could well be marked by unrest, uncertainty and anxiety. If last year showed us anything, it’s that communities working together can thrive despite these things. They can work together and be more than some of their parts. They can help those struggling keep up. Let’s remember last year’s wins and take them with us into this year. It’s going to be another big year, but after getting through 2020, we must like our chances of thriving in 2021.
Bryan Gibson
LETTERS
Ospri’s claims about TB are incorrect THE December 7 article Farmers Want Pest Management was interesting for the debate of whether or not possums carry and spread TB and whether to use 1080 or not. Interestingly, Ospri chief executive Steve Stuart claimed, “TB has been eradicated from wildlife in 2.73 million hectares since 2011.” Ospri’s main weapon has been aerial 1080 poison, with the target no doubt possums. However, Ospri’s boast flies in the face of hard facts. Back in 2016 the Minister of Primary Industries, then Nathan Guy, told Parliament of 124,000 possums autopsied over the previous 10 years, only 54 had bovine TB – a rate of 0.04% and “of 9830 possums autopsied in the last 12 months, none had TB.” That’s
zero percent. Ospri claims of wildlife spreading bovine TB are totally wrong. It doesn’t end there. The world standard for a country to declare TBfree is 0.2% for TB-infected herds and 0.1% for infected cattle. But New Zealand rates of TB infection in cattle are slight, about 0.002% average over recent years. It is so far below that required by world standards for a TBfree declaration – that New Zealand must be one of the world’s most TB-free countries. Which raises the question of the justification for Ospri. Of significance is that Tataraakina Trust member Nigel Baker is opposed to 1080 because “he has seen no proof that possums are the source of TB infection.” I suggest the cause may well
lie in Ospri’s testing regime where the antiquated, 25% error-prone TB test is still used. This results in infected animals not detected and remaining as ‘sleeper’ animals in herds. There are numerous cases of farmers fed up with continuing reactors and using the much more accurate blood test, discovering sleeper animals in herds. Besides as Baker rightly pointed out, 1080 “kills everything. It’s killing our wildlife.” I know 1080 well having worked for the NZ Forest Service on the first 1080 trials in NZ at Lake Wakatipu on fallow deer and then in subsequent pest work. I came to recognise it for what it is, an indiscriminate killer of everything that breathes oxygen and ingests
it. Originally developed as an insecticide in the 1920s, it kills insects and other invertebrates vital to the ecosystem and disrupts the food chain resulting – as shown by research, (Ruscoe 2007) – where the 20% rats surviving a 1080 drop surge back and in four years are four times original pre-poison numbers. Laurie Collins Sporting Hunters Outdoor Trust Westport
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