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The country’s dairy and beef sectors are on the home straight to eradicate the cattle disease Mycoplasma bovis. Spring bulk tank milk testing across the country has found no sign of M. bovis. This means there have been no detections of the infection for two years. MPI Director-General Ray Smith said the country is now entering the final phase of the eradication programme called ‘confidence of absence’. This requires a further couple of years of testing to gather sufficient data to prove M. bovis has gone from the national herd, and to declare eradication. “At that point, we’d be confident to declare freedom from the disease which will be a world-first eradication.” The Mycoplasma bovis eradication programme is a 10-year, $870 million collaboration between the government and industry partners DairyNZ and Beef + Lamb New Zealand. MPI said that allowing the disease to become endemic would have cost $1.3 billion in lost production in the first 10 years alone and continued to burden the sector into the future.
