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To have the opportunity to contribute to New Zealand’s biosecurity seemed perfect work for me
New Kiwifruit Vine Health chief executive Leanne Stewart
Plan to focus on full range of biosecurity threats How Kiwifruit Vine Health (KVH) manages biosecurity risk in the kiwifruit industry is set to change with the proposed introduction of a new Pathway Management Plan next year which will focus on the full range of biosecurity threats. By Elaine Fisher “The Pathway Plan is not about just pests and diseases but also managing risks including the movement of people, plant material, pollen and other orchard inputs, with the aim of managing risk across all aspects of the business,” says KVH’s newly appointed chief executive officer Leanne Stewart. After extensive industry consultation, the Pathway Management Plan is now with the government and the intention is for it to be implemented next year. Seeing the plan through its final formal stages and then to implementation are tasks for which Leanne is ideally suited. Biosecurity and plant protection in particular is her passion, ignited by growing up in rural Manawatu. “Growing up in the country helped me relate to how hard everybody works on farms and orchards and the need to 20
The ORCHARDIST : OCTOBER 2021
protect their livelihoods. To have the opportunity to contribute to New Zealand’s biosecurity seemed perfect work for me,” says Leanne who took up the role in May when former chief executive Stu Hutchings left to become Biosecurity New Zealand’s chief biosecurity officer. Leanne attended Massey University and has a Bachelor of Science degree in plant biology and ecology and a postgraduate diploma in science and plant protection. She joined the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF) which subsequently became the Ministry for Primary Industries, and later was one of three successful applicants, out of 400, to be appointed to a role with the International Plant Protection Convention based in Rome from 2015 to 2017.
