Of course, the Nait review started in 2016 and well before Mycoplasma bovis gathered its terrible head of steam.
Parliament seems to be worried about M bovis implications, having plucked New Zealand First’s Farm Debt Mediation Bill from the filing cabinet and passing its first reading unanimously in a little over 24 hours.
Having had a hand in writing this Bill with Ron Mark it was refreshing to see the National Party genuinely open up to the concept.
This was Parliament at its best and being an amendment to the Receiverships Act it does two things. First, it requires debt mediation before any receivership involving agricultural debt can begin. Secondly, it removes the $200,000 financial compensation cap from the Banking Ombudsman Scheme.
At least it will now go to a select committee for refinement and given the composition of Parliament, it stands a very good chance of being enacted. This is a genuine coup for NZ First and a feather in the cap for Mark Patterson MP.
Another thing about M bovis has been the slow realisation that it goes far beyond being just a dairy issue. About one-third of all calves taken onto sheep and beef farms come from dairy farms with beef from dairy cattle providing over 50% of our beef exports.
Which takes me back to Nait.
Federated Farmers has come in for stick over its 2011 submission on the original legislation.
Yes, Federated Farmers did write “It is the view of the federation that a national, compulsory Nait scheme is not needed in NZ at this time.”
But that needs to be read in the context of the whole submission and of course, Nait’s limited bovine and cervine focus.
It also added “The federation does, however, support the development of commercial, voluntary traceability systems with price signals from processors and markets driving stock procurement.”
If you cast your mind back almost 10 years, you’ll recall large claims were made about what Nait would achieve for farmers.
There would be a major increase to value-add and returns, biosecurity would be massively enhanced and there would be major onfarm productivity gains. This was all quantified in 2009 with a claim on the Nait website that there would be economic benefits of $141 billion 20 years after introduction.
With the benefit of experience, the federation’s submission lodged seven years ago has been vindicated.
The federation said at the time that for Nait to be truly effective as a biosecurity measure it needed all at-risk animals to be in from the get-go. Anything less was a Swiss-cheese solution that created unacceptable gaps. In this respect M bovis has been a scary wake-up call for the sum of all fears – foot-and-mouth disease. If that did strike then Nait as it is would be as useful as mammary glands on a bull.
The federation also, correctly, took issue with the claims about value-add.
Exporters are showcasing the back story of Kiwi farms but that’s not from Nait traceability but due to commercial advantage.
It’s also fair to say this tends towards the high-end and not in a Kuala Lumpur McDonald’s.
Federated Farmers even anticipated the traceability mess that’s landed Nait in hot water.
Bearing in mind this was written in 2011 it wrote “Research on comparable systems shows unacceptably high error rates and commensurate lack of confidence, both by farmers and by markets.
“In one example, an analysis, in Australia, showed that at least 20% of cattle do not have lifetime traceability. Should similar problems occur in NZ, the effectiveness of the Nait will, rightly, be called into question.”
That’s exactly what happened.
Nait always seemed to be more about the low-frequency tag than an easily implemented, intuitive farm management solution. The wake-up call has pointedly come from a disaster as opposed to heeding what commentators like Barber tried to warn Nait about several years ago. NAIT broke the cardinal rule of sales: the customer is always right.
While very late in the day, Ospri chief executive Michelle Edge’s recent comments about fusing Nait with an electronic animal status declaration might show Nait is at last getting it.
More is needed because the glaring hole in Nait is its zero integration with dairy herd management systems.
While farmers don’t begrudge Nait, they begrudge a lack of integration that forces wasteful and unproductive double entry. If this and other issues are to be fixed then Nait needs a first principles reappraisal.
David Broome is a Wellington public affairs consultant and was formerly chief of staff to NZ First leader Winston Peters and a former strategic communications general manager at Federated Farmers.
