The M bovis governance group, made up of Ministry for Primary Industries director-general Ray Smith, DairyNZ chief executive Tim Mackle, Beef + Lamb chief executive Sam McIvor and independently chaired by Smith, meets monthly to discuss and review the eradication programme.
Smith said the group is focused on strategic planning to ensure the programme builds on progress made to date and continues towards eradication.
“To date the programme has found 207 infected properties, stopping further spread of the disease and clearing the infection from these properties,” he said.
At this month’s meeting the group was joined by DairyNZ farmer elected director Colin Glass, Beef + Lamb chairman Andrew Morrison, it policy and advocacy manager Dave Harrison and independent expert Dr Roger Paskin.
The strategy workshop included a briefing by the leaders of Ospri and Kiwi Vine Health, two organisations Smith said provided valuable insights from their experience in large-scale disease eradication programmes.
“They share significant learnings and experiences, many of these directly and indirectly valuable lessons for the M bovis programme as we design and build the next stage of the programme – long-term surveillance to provide assurance that eradication has been achieved.
“The governance workshop determined that now is not the time to reduce efforts or slacken off – indeed over the next 12 months we need to continue efforts to delimit the disease,” Smith said.
Options are being developed so the group can consider risks and trade-offs and decide which ones are to be worked up.
“We are talking about the long-term focus and structure of the programme and how long-term surveillance can be delivered to ensure confidence that the disease is absent.
“There are risks and trade-offs in any approach taken and it is important that they are considered.”
Smith said farmer welfare will not be a trade-off.
“Farmer welfare is and will remain of the highest priority of the programme.”
The process to develop the plan will take a few months with agreement on the detailed plan expected in May.
The plan is about the programme after the end of the phase of finding, containing and controlling the disease.
“In particular, long-term surveillance to find any possible tail of infection and ultimately provide assurance that the disease is absent,” he said.
The governance group’s views will guide the strategy, shape the characteristics of the programme’s future and specify the design principles to be followed.
“That’s about the design and implementation of the long-term aspects of the programme continuing to be led and overseen by industry.”
Smith said the governance group is very aware of the impact M bovis eradication has on farmers involved and is committed to reducing that impact as much as possible.
“It will always be a stressful and challenging time and the programme works hard to provide as much support to farmers as possible.
“We know that the best thing to minimise the impact on farmers is to get testing completed as soon as possible so they can get back to farming, free from restrictions.
“We also believe that stopping farmers from being affected by ultimately stopping the spread of the disease and eradicating it is in the best welfare interests of all farmers.
“The programme is committed to making improvements to benefit the farmer,” Smith said.
MPI’s compensation team has made significant progress in reducing the number of aged claims waiting longer than 60 days with the 74 in the system in mid October now reduced to 16.
“MPI is aiming to clear all aged claims by Christmas,” Smith said.
So far more than $110 million compensation has been paid to farmers.
