Friday, March 29, 2024

FROM THE RIDGE: Advice says sheep can move M bovis

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Looking at the latest map of the infected and restricted properties overlaid with the Notices of Direction, those to be issued and then the forward traces it is difficult not to be pessimistic about our ability to eradicate this bloody disease.
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The Primary Industries Ministry and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor are taking plenty of stick and hindsight will show they got a lot of things wrong but they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. 

The worst response would have been to not try to eradicate this disease in the first place.

Being difficult to detect is a big handicap for any response measures.

When it was first found in July last year in Oamaru, it was a shock our biosecurity had been breached with yet another unwanted organism and this time in our own sector.

At that point most of us would have hoped it could be contained to the dairy industry and within a small area.

It was unwelcome news to find out in December it was also in Southland, which turned out to be the original source, and up here near Hastings, this time on a bull beef unit which is when those of us with dairy bull beef realised it could now be any of us. 

The calves we grow to finishing come from a wide range of farms and regions including Canterbury, Southland and Waikato, where the latest confirmed case has appeared.

It’s been a bloody difficult time and challenge for those many farms and people who have had the bacteria confirmed on their property or those who are suspected of having it because of associations and stock movements with confirmed cases.

The rural support trusts and other groups are working to help these people but one can only imagine the distress of seeing a herd of cows with decades of careful breeding being sent to slaughter. Our thoughts are with these folk.

I have a sheep stud here which has been bred for nearly 50 years and it would be heartbreaking to be in that same boat.

Here are examples of how I’ve tried to get my own biosecurity intact.

I did have contracted calves from Southland for autumn delivery but the source farm had reared calves in a previous year with milk from a farm now confirmed with M bovis. This line of calves had tested twice as clear so they were then allowed to be moved.

However, if I took the calves I could have come under a Notice of Direction if things changed on the rearing property. Even though MPI says sheep are not involved in transmission I had conflicting advice from AsureQuality. 

Perhaps the sheep themselves might not be a potential vehicle for transmission but dirt on their hooves or a ute backed up to my race might be.

I would have then had to advise my 35 ram clients this coming December that my property was now under a NOD and I wouldn’t have been surprised if some of them, practising good biosecurity measures themselves, politely declined further rams from me.

I would have honoured my bull purchase contract if I had to but in this case another farmer was more than happy to take these cattle instead.

We have had a great autumn and I have a stack of feed but haven’t gone onto the market to buy bulls, preferring instead to feed the heck out of the ones I have. This might be a factor with others as well and contributing to the lower store markets. But more likely it is the seasonal schedule decline while the cow kill is under way, the fact traders are more attracted to the sheep pens with the positive outlook for sheep meat and that the cattle store market has been overheated for a couple of years and is now more rational.

I have been annoyed to hear about a black market operating for cows and calves, which has made tracing the disease almost impossible. I must be naive as I didn’t know it was happening. I hope those doing this to avoid tax are taken to task.

And, like everyone I know, I’ve gone to great lengths to ensure my Nait records have always been accurate other than the odd farm death not being taken off and now hear that as a sector there’s been a large amount of non-compliance.

Both these publicised practices are not eliciting any public sympathy towards our sector and making this look like a self-inflicted wound.

I suspect a lot more on M bovis will come out over the next couple of weeks and how we are to deal with it will change.

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