NEWS
MACHINERY
MANAGEMENT
Appeals lodged on Psa case.
Tea from an unlikely source.
Management programme lights fire under South Canterbury deer farmer PAGE 31
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TO ALL FARMERS, FOR ALL FARMERS AUGUST 7, 2018: ISSUE 658
www.ruralnews.co.nz
Here for ‘years’?
LAGGARDS MUST GO! PETER BURKE
NIGEL MALTHUS
CONCERNS HAVE been raised that Mycoplasma bovis may have been in New Zealand at least five or six years before the currently accepted date of discovery. That’s the belief of Oamaru veterinarian and Angus beef breeder Neil Sanderson. “I’ve got people who are pretty convinced they’ve had similar outbreaks, or similar incidences of untreatable mastitis with high mortality, quite a long time before 2015,” he told Rural News. “But MPI is very reluctant to entertain any of that, unfortunately, which I think is quite disappointing. “Because if it was found to be in the country much before the MPI contention of a 2015 incursion, then this erad-
ication programme would likely be a waste of time.” Sanderson believes legitimately imported germplasm – imported embryos or semen – could be a likely entry mechanism and is sceptical about the veterinary medicine pathway. “Back in 2007-18, an EU audit of the NZ germplasm industry played merry hell with NZ’s germplasm trade into Europe, stopping it for several years,” Sanderson claims. However, he believes the EU’s concern at the time was more about trade
than biosecurity. He says he and others had warned MPI and the then Minister of Agriculture, David Carter, that the greater risk was to NZ importing European germplasm rather than the other way around. “I know that for importing semen and embryos [from the EU] the donor animals did not have to be tested for Mycoplasma bovis,” Sanderson says. “There are processes for handling the embryos that were thought to remove any risk of M.bovis, but I think when you read the research that’s been
done, you can’t absolutely rule it out.” The disease appeared in NZ mainly in Holsteins. Sanderson says he had not heard of any Jersey herd or any beef herd infected, which also points to a germplasm source. He warns that in the upcoming mating season beef and dairy farmers must be vigilant about sourcing service bulls from traceable sources and avoid buying bulls from saleyards and nonverifiable trading enterprises. • See “Beef industry unfairly tainted” page 36
Beefing up Maori farming Cedric Nepia (Trophy Kaitiaki) and Andrew Morrison, chairman of Beef + Lamb New Zealand launching the 2019 Ahuwhenua Trophy competition for the top Maori sheep and beef farm, at last week’s Red Meat Sector conference. BLNZ is a major sponsor of the competition and Morrison says Māori are big players in the red meat sector. “They bring scale and innovation and contribute hugely to our sheep and beef exports and the strength of the New Zealand economy.” More coverage of the red meat sector conference in this issue.
peterb@ruralnews.co.nz
THE MEAT industry has some great exemplars but still too many laggards, says the Minister for Primary Industry, Damien O’Connor. He told the Red Meat Sector conference that the laggards are farmers who ignore NAIT and animal traceability and who breach animal welfare codes and other regulations. He says New Zealand’s reputation is determined by the lowest common-denominator farmer for whom there is no place anywhere in the primary sector. “This is because an iPhone can send a negative message around the world and undermine all the good stories we will tell under the Taste Pure Nature brand.” O’Connor says Taste Pure Nature is a good start but he believes NZ must promote regional differences as the wine industry does. “Then we will have people coming to NZ to find the subtle differences in the flavour of meat between, say, Hawkes Bay and Canterbury.” O’Connor referred to two serious concerns he hads about the meat industry: one was the lack of women at the conference -- not peculiar to the meat industry; the other was the low involvement of Maori. “They have values, kaitiakitanga (guardianship) and manaakitanga (hospitality) that embody everything we are trying to do in producing food and protecting our environment,” he says.
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