Feds make case for rural bank lending probe
Bankers have been making record profits in the last few years, but those aren’t the only records they’ve been breaking, says Federated Farmers vice president Richard McIntyre.
Dairy industry leaders have welcomed the successful prosecution of a businessman who threatened to spike infant formula with 1080.
Jeremy Kerr, the owner of another pest-control product, Feratox, mixed highly concentrated 1080 with baby milk formula and posted them to Fonterra and to Federated Farmers. Included in the package was a letter demanding the country stop using 1080 or he would release poisoned infant milk powder into the Chinese market
and one unspecified market.
He was jailed last week for eight and a half years by Justice Geoffrey Venning, who said the potential impact of his actions on New Zealand's trade relationship with China and others was "extremely serious".
The threat is believed to have cost Fonterra nearly $20 million and cost Federated Farmers nearly $100,000.
In his victim impact statement, Feds chief executive Graham Smith said Kerr's actions were "a direct threat to the very fabric of society".
The threat could have led to an international ban on NZ food products, he says.
"The 1080 threat had the potential to devastate our ability to successfully operate within these markets and would have cost the country billions of dollars. Customers would have stopped buying and using our products due to their immediate safety concerns."
There was a potential threat to all sectors of society, given NZ's reliance on primary industries, Smith says.
Fonterra chairman John Wilson said Kerr's actions were deplorable and had a huge impact on the cooperative and other food firms.
Fonterra's Maury Leyland says the threat had a big impact on Fonterra and it staff.
"It's hard to imagine a worse threat to children and families, or to the viability of our co-operative, the wider dairy industry and our country," said Leyland, who is Fonterra's outgoing managing director of people, culture and safety.
Bankers have been making record profits in the last few years, but those aren’t the only records they’ve been breaking, says Federated Farmers vice president Richard McIntyre.
The 2023-24 season has been a roller coaster ride for Waikato dairy farmers, according to Federated Farmers dairy section chair, Mathew Zonderop.
Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) director general Ray Smith says job cuts announced this morning will not impact the way the Ministry is organised or merge business units.
Scales Corporation is acquiring a number of orchard assets from Bostock Group.
Family and solidarity shone through at the 75 years of Ferdon sale in Otorohanga last month.
The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) has informed staff it will cut 391 jobs following a consultation period.
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