The Winton practice sent an email to clients on Thursday urging people whose stock or properties might have been linked to Southern Centre Dairies to come forward.
Southern Centre Dairies, the hub of infected properties in Southland, is owned by Gea and Alfons Zeestraten.
Vet South director veterinarian Georgette Wouda said Ministry for Primary Industries surveillance work indicated the disease was limited to a relatively small group of farms but more needed to be known.
“Down in our region all of the infected properties to date have links with Alfons Zeestraten’s farms.
“We know that the Zeestraten stock were certainly infected in 2016 and 2017,” Wouda said.
MPI had made that information public but Wouda said Vet South believed it was important to the response, especially in tracing animal movements and alerting farmers to all the evidence possible.
“NAIT has failed us – we know that has not been good enough.
“This is the last outcry, best by the nation, best by the dairy and beef industries and importantly best for farmers who are the ones who can help us find all the leads possible.”
Wouda said calves born in 2016 and 2017 from Zeestraten’s Southern Centre Dairies farms or reared on waste milk from their farms were at very high risk of being infected by M bovis.
Some adult cattle from those farms would also be infected as would calves reared in small numbers on lifestyle blocks and sold back as adult cattle to dairy farms.
Tracking the movement of stock and waste milk from Zeestraten’s farms from 2016 was critical to identifying those properties at highest risk of being infected and just how widespread the outbreak really was.
“MPI has tracked some but we believe there are many more,” Wouda said.
She was concerned at the Kiwi attitude suggesting the horse had bolted and NZ should just live with M bovis like the rest of the world.
“It’s not quite like that – living with Mb would mean either an end to dairy farming as we know it, if we were to attempt to manage it any way, or else shouldering the increased treatment, welfare and social costs of letting it run rife throughout the NZ cattle population.”
NZ farming systems and their animal movements are quite different and wouldn’t allow for the same management as most other countries.
“It’s not like we are all going to fall over but it’s not a case of she’ll be right mate – it won’t be if we don’t make it right.”
Zeestraten said he was not willing to respond to the email sent by Vet South.
“We want to keep our focus on what we have to do, keep our heads down and get on with our own business.
“We are following all the MPI processes and for us the relationship with MPI appears very transparent,” Zeestraten said.
MPI supported the core message of the Vet South communication.
“We are encouraging farmers who believe they have bought discard milk for calf feed and-or calves and cows from the affected operation to contact us on 0800 80 99 66.”
O’Connor said the eradication of Mb remained on the table.
But he said there was still a big job ahead to determine the extent of the spread as MPI worked with urgency to build a complete picture to fully inform whether eradication was feasible and economically viable.
To date there were 23 infected properties with 48 farms under Restricted Place Notice with 1500 trace properties connected through animal movements.
“We did think initially we had just the one hub of infection but we know now we have two – South Canterbury and Southland.”
MPI’s tracing programme had been made more difficult because it appeared there had been significant unrecorded movement of young calves around the Southland hub.
“Despite the complexity, we remain committed to getting rid of M bovis if at all possible. We know we’re up against a hard deadline with winter grazing and farm change movements.
“There’s huge pressure to make decisions before that (May).”
O’Connor could not say how much money the Government was prepared to contribute to fully eradicate the disease.
As for compensations there were 44 claims in already and O’Connor said while he couldn’t make the decisions he had personally “kicked a few of those claims along”.
“And I can ensure as much resource as possible is going into the process.”
