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Three years after cattle disease Mycoplasma bovis was first detected in New Zealand, real progress is being made in its elimination, with the number of farms under restrictions down 60 per cent on last year, a Wellsford meeting heard last month.
Ministry for Primary Industries consultant veterinary epidemiologist Chris Morley admitted that things had not always been handled well in the eradication programme, but said he thought systems were now working far better.
“There have been some pretty untidy things in this programme, it wasn’t working as it should last year,” he said. “But there has been a lot of good progress since then.”
As of July 3, there were 10 active confirmed cases of M bovis in the country, three of which were in Northland, two on beef farms and one in a dairy herd. And although Northland had the highest number of Notice of Direction movement restrictions, Mr Morley pointed out that around 95 per cent of such suspected cases were found to be clear.
He said the biggest risk of infection remained the movement of cattle, and inadequate or unclear recording of National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) information.
“We need clearer NAIT information. I’m tired of hearing ‘they were reared in the Waikato’ or wherever, when they were born in Southland or somewhere else,” he said.
Mr Morley added that putting every farm under Notice of Direction or active surveillance into complete lockdown was unrealistic and would cripple the industry.
“If we locked them all down, we would have half of all our farms locked down,” he said. “They are low risk farms and the vast majority are found to be negative.”
The current phase of finding and eliminating the disease is expected to continue until the middle of next year, after which background surveillance testing is set to continue for around seven years.
The meeting also heard from Dairy NZ’s regional M bovis recovery manager, Callum Livingston, that there was an active team of advisers helping farmers through the stress of M bovis restrictions and testing. There is also a specialist compensation team and support workers to help farmers deal with NAIT requirements.
Since the first outbreak in 2017, around 158,000 cattle have been culled and more than $163.5 million has been paid in compensation.
