“You could easily argue that regulation’s needed but you know it’s not going to happen,” Cook said.
He did not think cost was the reason for poor uptake of drench resistance tests and wondered if farmers did not see enough value in the information or found it too much hassle to carry out.
Cook is national spokesperson for Wormwise, an industry-wide initiative started in 2004 in response to a national drench resistance study. After a drop in funding in 2009 Wormwise reduced its activity.
However, a resurrection is under way including moves to make it a charitable trust with Beef + Lamb New Zealand as the chief funder.
The main purpose of Wormwise was to promote best practice in worm management, not solely focusing on drench resistance.
“I don’t know that drench resistance is escalating,” Cook said.
“Sheep and beef farmers are very aware of the things they should be doing. How much of that they’re applying I think is questionable.”
The biggest gains made in the early days of Wormwise were in getting animal health companies promoting sustainable messages.
“Early in Wormwise we observed animal health company behaviour change – they were supporting the concept but they’ve largely gone back to their old ways and have been less active in promoting sustainable practice.”
Federated Farmers vice president, William Rolleston, said regulation was difficult to make fit for purpose, keep flexible enough, and up to date.
“I’m not sure the meat companies would want to do that unless there was a market advantage,” Rolleston said.
He said the best approach to drench resistance issues was education for farmers and veterinarians on best practice and its implementation.
Progressive Meats managing director, Craig Hickson, said quality assurance programmes focused on attributes important to customers.
If animal health plans and drench tests were a customer requirement, it would be appropriate, but Hickson was not aware of any examples of that yet.
‘Early in Wormwise we observed animal health company behaviour change – they were supporting the concept but they’ve largely gone back to their old ways and have been less active in promoting sustainable practice.’
“I’m not sure it’s a practice that should be imposed by a meat company or anyone for that matter.”
Dunedin-based Techion Group had been working with meat companies during the past four years around worm management.
Managing director, Greg Mirams, said the company had written and distributed a quarantine procedure for Silver Fern Farms (SFF) suppliers to help protect the supply chain and make farmers aware of the risks.
“If you develop drug resistance on your farm it’s a permanent issue and damaging to your asset because you can’t reverse it,” Mirams said.
The procedure was not mandatory but encouraged quarantine drenching before lambs left a farm for a finishing destination, or on their arrival.
SFF was also encouraging farmers to know the status of worm treatments on their own farm by carrying out drench resistance tests.
The company had negotiated a discount on faecal egg reduction tests bought through SFF but Mirams said the uptake so far had been slow.
The third step was talking with SFF suppliers about how they used drugs on their farm.
Techion was involved in a project called Parasol, in response to the European Union’s desire to change the way drenches were used in the red-meat industry.
There were no restrictions in New Zealand on how many times animals could be drenched before slaughter, only withholding periods.
“In most Scandinavian countries you can’t buy drench unless you’ve got a prescription,” Mirams said.
“They’ve found that very complex to deliver to industry. We don’t want that to happen here – however we can’t ignore that the consumer wants more comfort around chemical use in its lamb.”
Mirams did not believe making drench resistance tests mandatory would work right now, saying at this stage it was more about education, awareness, and empowering farmers with better information, but in time it could be part of a quality supply chain.
The Alliance Group was also working with Techion, developing a system to help address drench resistance issues and would be announcing some new initiatives soon.
