The Government will attempt to eradicate the Mycoplasma bovis cattle disease and will foot the bill for almost 70% of $900 million the process is expected to cost.
But the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) still does not know where the disease came from.
In a media conference at Federated Farmers headquarters in Wellington, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called it an “ambitious plan.”
She says the choice to eradicate M Bovis was to “protect the national herd and the long-term productivity of the farming sector.”
No country which that has dealt with the disease – which is everywhere but Norway – has ever successfully eradicated it.
But, as the disease has been identified early, the likelihood of being able to eradicate it is increased.
Although officials think there is “a very good shot” at full eradication, ridding the country of M bovis is not a 100% guarantee.
Ardern says New Zealand has “one shot” at eradicating the disease from the country.
The phased eradication will take one to two years, MPI officials say.
Estimates put the number of cattle that will need to be culled at almost 130,000 – that’s on top of the 26,000 that have been culled so far.
A large number of those won’t be infected, but the cull must occur to limit the spread.
The decision was made collectively by the Government and the farming sector after months of analysis to best understand the impact.
“Today’s decision to eradication is driven by the Government’s desire to protect the national herd from the disease and protect the base of our economy – the farming sector,” Ardern says.
Speaking with the affected farmers in recent week, she says it’s obvious the disease has taken a toll.
MPI does not expect any ramifications on trade as a result of today’s decision.
Ardern says the alternative to eradication is to risk the spread of M bovis across the national herd.
She has sought the advice of overseas experts from countries such as Ireland – where the disease has been present for decades.
She says the experts told her that, as M bovis had been detected early, there was a chance of eradication,
Minister of Biosecurity Damien O’Conner says all parties agreed if there was a chance to get rid of the disease, it should be taken.
“It’s the only chance we’ll get.”
He called it a “wake up call” to New Zealand and said he will be working to upgrade biosecurity laws to make sure this can’t happen again.
The cost of the phased eradication is expected to be $886 million over the next decade.
The Government will stump up 68% of that cost, with DairyNZ and Beef+Lamb NZ meeting the other 32%.
Ardern says the Budget was specifically designed so these sorts of fiscal hits could be absorbed. But it is unclear where exactly the Government’s part of the payment will come from.
The alternative option, long-term management, was projected to cost $1.2 billion.
Almost $700 million of which would have been through lost production and $520 million would have gone towards the cost of response.
Ardern says to not act at all would have likely cost the industry $1.3 billion in lost production over the next decade.
The phased eradication will involve:
- Culling all cattle on all infected properties, along with cattle on most restricted properties.
- All infected farms found in future will also be depopulated
- Following depopulation, farms are disinfected and will lie fallow for 60 days after which they can be restocked.
- Intensive active surveillance, including testing and tracing, will continue to detect infected herds
- There will be some flexibility for farmers in the timing of culling to offset production losses.
- An improved compensation claim process – MPI says a substantial part of a farmer’s claim for culled cows should now take 4-10 days, with a full verified claim taking 2-3 weeks.
69 Comments
Hope they don't screw this up, it's going to cause a lot of heartache. No other country managed to eradicate it, so whats special about us?
https://thisisrjg.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/bummer-of-a-birthmark-hal/
Between the devil and the deep: D-day for Mycoplasma bovis call
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12…
Overseas dairy rivals are "laughing their heads off" as the Government kills New Zealand's cows in an overblown reaction to the discovery of Mycoplasma bovis, says the invader cattle disease's first known victim, Aad van Leeuwen.
Wow, this is a gutsy call, because if eradication does not happen then the ongoing cost of management will still apply. I think I have to take my hat off to them for making the tough call, but it must have been hard to do, it's damned sad. Hopefully from it will come a more extensive, less stressful way of farming animals, can I expect to stop seeing bony cows standing up to their hocks in cold mud, not a blade of grass in sight or staggering their way to the milking shed, please let that be so.
Reads to me like the big guys (DairyNZ, Fed Farmers, Beef & Lamb) supported eradication. And why wouldn't they when the Government is paying for 2/3rds of the estimated compensation bill?
There is going to be one hell of a lot of monitoring and enforcement necessary to amend/improve current practice - including that LSBers have to be brought into that monitoring regime.
Was speaking to a student of mine from a family of professional breeders of cattle. They rarely sold calves via the yards and most calves went off the property without Nait registration. When asked what she thought the effect would be on their business should they end up with Mbovis in their herd - she said it would ruin them.
So, the cost of compliance with Nait will be being re-thought by a lot of farm owners/managers, I suspect.
Good luck to us all... hope MPI is up to it.
Its not only the small farmers that are the 'unprofessional' ones Belle.
I bought calves off the biggest landowner in my district, One of the 'big' farming families. The calves were tagged alright, they just weren't scanned in. They were turned loose into a 200 acre scrub block before we found out.
Is the same the case for homekill operations? Only 130 of the 381 listings for beef cattle on TradeMe today mention Nait tagged in their product descriptions. Doesn't mean the balance aren't tagged but in future it will become harder to sell them without, I'm sure.
You can't sell any animal through an agent, or send it to a meat processor or to the saleyards without a tag. And by far the easiest time to tag an animal is while it is small. No proper farmer would buy lines of cattle without tags - too much hassle. A couple for homekill is a different story.
Doris, I was in Ireland recently talking to a beef farmer about Origin Green. Every animal has to go through an approved channel. If a cattle beast/calf dies - it has to be sent to a knackery and the knackery has to send the id info on to the id database - no burying cattle on farm anymore. If you do a home kill it has to go to an approved abbatoir/home kill butcher who has the responsibility to send the id info on. So farmers have the responsibility to initially tag & register every animal - dead or alive on farm. Then the downstream processors etc have the responsibility to forward information on every animal they handle. There would need to be a paradigm shift in the way cattle are handled in some sectors in NZ for this to happen.
CO, have i really underestimated how bad MPB is going to be? If it's been here 4 years then i would have thought the infected farms would have been talking about serious disruption to their farm systems but I have heard nothing.
If it's this bad will they shut down calf rearers?
I have said this a number of times here. Just in my instance MPI have been useless. I have a forward contact animal. The farm it came from has had stock in the local sale the last couple of times I have been there. Over 100 cattle from this other farm have gone to several different farms. If its happened once, this could be repeated 3000 times over for all the other farms similar to me and my 'contact' farm. There is no shutdown or lockdown of forward traced stock. Its all bullshit. MPI are fast asleep on the job. So I got an animal from a suspect property. 20 actually in total. No one has put their hand up and said dont sell anything store. We are going into winter. Time to destock a bit. Luckily for mpi I take my stock to killable weights. They all go to the works. But there will be farms everywhere selling stock store at sales or in the paddock. They will move all over the country dispersing bovis. This is all bullshit. A neighbour of mine was rung...same thing...he told them to piss off. He will have had grazers going home in the last few weeks. What more can I say. Its bullshit
Yes, MPI noted that;
High-risk animal movements have been traced to 3000 farms. About 300 properties are in biosecurity lockdown and 858 are under surveillance.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12…
Yes PA that is the rub. An old cliche to be true, but prevention is the best cure. Another old fashioned term was animal husbandry. Is it that, despite all the technological and mechanical advances, and degrees available from the agricultural colleges, the drive for profits has overridden good stock practices, and if so, might this outbreak not then recur?
Some years ago I visited a farming family in North Canterbury who have been established there since the last half of the 19th century. They are predominantly sheep farmers and always have been because pasture quality and growth height does not lend itself to cattle and nor does the topography much. Yet dairy farmers were moving into the surrounding areas. The old farmers were annoyed, very annoyed, because they knew they were pushing against nature, the land and climate was not conducive to dairying, but on top of that they were shocked by mistreatment of stock, especially bobby calves. I think they saw something like this coming.
Bit of a long bow to draw that non dairy farmers saw a biosecurity incursion coming from dairy farmers moving in to their area foxglove. When we bought our dairy farm (it was a dairy farm we didn't convert it) we were surrounded by sheep farms who weren't slow to voice their negative views about dairy farmers/farms. 20years later, there isn't a sheep farm near us as all those negative sheep farmers are now proud dairy farmers themselves. There has been a section of the non dairy farm sector in Southland quick to blame dairy farmers for all environmental issues - despite only being 30-35% of pastoral land use. Yet these same non dairy farmers are making the loudest noise about the restrictions in the new Water and Land Plan on conversions. They want the ability to sell/convert to dairy in the future due to the higher land value that creates. Wants cake and eat it to comes to mind.
If they saw mistreatment of bobby calves they had a duty to report it to either dairyNZ, the milk processor or SPCA. If they did not then they are as guilty as the dairy farmers or else hypocrites.
I hope that MPI, MSD and the other 'I'm from the Gubmint and I'm here to Help' agencies have their compensation schemes worked out, at least to a point where the left and right hands have open comms channels. The miserable performance of EQC in the aftermath of the Christchurch quakes is not a good omen here.
And that the Finance Minister's cupboard isn't bare.
Because at 130K animals, there's the thick end of $150m straight up at a value of $1-1.2K each.
And assuming 50% milkers, each one should produce perhaps 400 KgMS which at $7/kg is a lost production of 65K * 400 * 7 = $182m.
So we have $332M in year 1 for openers. That $1billion over ten years sounds wobbly already.
It will be Interesting to quiz Them Wot Know about the raw details of the economic forecasting behind all this....because it will affect everything from rural support to tax revenue.
Agree it did/does look too late to me as well - but full marks I suppose for trying. They could hardly come out with a decision that was not supported by the big players of DairyNZ, Beef & Lamb and Fed Farmers. The criticism for going against the wishes of industry would have been a hornets nest for them to manage from a PR perspective (and they've already started paying out compensation to some).
So a bit of a rock and a hard place type of decision.
Positively wall st. Calf rearing will have to change a bit. Taking milk to a high temp to kill the bug. Calf auctions need to be shut down. Dont know if they will. But rearers ought to get their calves from tested clear farms. Knowing the test is only 60%....anyway um possibly bring in a testing regime as we did for tb. So movement of stock is only possible with a clear test. Having been on movement control in the 90s its a real drag on productivity. As you never know what a test will show taking risks and pushing the envelope was not an option.
Possibly grazing blocks will climb in price. Dairy farmers wont want to send their stock to farms where they will mix with other stock. Whatever the govt decided this was happening anyway.
Each farm will look at becoming more self sufficient. Buying dairy x stock to fatten will look dicey. Straight beef cattle prices will rise.
I see ewe prices climbing. Lamb returns are great. So farming more ewes rather than trading cattle would be classed as a much better option for a year or two.
Finding good ewes wont be easy. They are worth huge money dead. Chinese love our mutton at the moment.
This is pretty big for everybody. Lots to think about. I wish I had confidence in what mpi are trying to achieve. I dont. If I did, yes I would say eradicate. But just from what I have seen I think they are pissing in the wind.
The only way that they will achieve this is to have the army running MPI and soldiers on the ground policing it. MPI are just too totally weak and useless and Farmers are totally rebellious and a law unto themselves. This will not happen with out stomping on a few heads. Labour are too nice for that so it will all be a total waste of money like PSA, Myrtle rust, Kauai die back. Thank National for Emasculating MPI.
They will have the same chance of eradicating this as eliminating poverty...ie. zero chance. It should be treated like any other animal health issue, by farmers. I believe that farmers are generally independent and freedom loving people who like to stand on their own two feet. If you choose to paint that as rebellious and a law unto themselves then I’d say that’s a compliment in today’s world of dependent no-hopers and PC busy bodies who love throwing stones out of glasshouses and telling other people how to live their lives.
Having been involved in IVF for many years, this has been my absolute concern. All those years of hard working dedicated farmers building up their stock through genetics from their most valuable animals will be gone. It sickens me to know that we rejected, as a country, the idea of intensive barn farming years ago - but rightly or wrongly, I see this as the outcome we feared. I didn't even know it was happening until now.
This is going to be catastrophic to New Zealand. The fact both political parties and major vested stakeholders sat at the press conference table, says to me this is going to be devastating to our economy. If anyone wants to know what a ‘black swan event’ is, they maybe just about to find out.
I was listening to Radio NZ this morning where they had a panel of 3 farmers, getting their views on eradicate vs contain and how it will affect them. One of the farmers was a British guy in the Waikato who talked of his experiences back home. He said just how different it will be here if we can't get rid of it, ie: Closed farming system, no live animals ever coming on farm, farmers owning their own stock trucks or trailers they tow behind their tractors to take animals to the works.
Got me thinking of what a closed system farming may look, comparing production figures and profitability:
https://www.realestate.co.nz/3162335
250 cows on 131ha is 1.9 milking cows/ha
Comparable dairy farm I worked on 2 seasons ago at 130ha effective was 450cows, that's a stocking rate of 3.5 cows/ha, that's good Waikato land. Young stock trucked off to the hills, bit of silage made on but most bought in.
3.5 cows/ha vs 1.9 cows/ha is a big whack to the pocket.
For my previous employer to keep everything in house that would be 450 cows to 250. 150,000kgms vs 83,000ms. Turn over $900k vs $495k ($6 payout).
Bearing in mind he'll have near the same work load and more importantly the same debt.
Wonder what's being said in the banks at present...
Yes, lots of food for thought there.
During the story on tonight's OneNews, the CEO of MPI said an interesting thing;
"As I said earlier, no cast iron guarantee with this and maybe we'll have to reassess it in the Spring".
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/government-signs-off-cullin…
I suspect that is what will happen. They can't go on compensating over the life of the eradication plan (which I think someone referred to it being a 10-year plan).
May well have this wrong but don’t think the origin of this disease has been identified?? That in itself is more than a worry as how then is it stopped from perpetuating from the source(s.) And then to be really glum, if the eradication is eventually successful, if how it happened is still unknown, what’s to stop it reintroducing itself.
For the origin to be identified, MPI needs to be able to prove it 100% otherwise could they not be liable for liable/defamation by the farmer involved? Given how long its been here unless someone puts their hand up it may be unlikely MPI can prove it, or if they can prove where it started that doesn't mean they can prove how it came in, if they have a recalcitrant farmer.
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