Good farm records helping keep M. bovis at bay
Good records on cattle movement have helped the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) clear another farm impacted by Mycoplasma bovis.
First results from the nationwide milk surveillance testing for Mycoplasma bovis have all come back clear.
Welcoming the early results, Agriculture and Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor said it showed that eradication remains a viable option.
“This is a good result and gives us confidence we are on the right track as we hunt down this disease,” he said.
“However, there is still a big job to do to determine the extent of the spread; we have two rounds of discarded milk testing to complete. The discarded milk comes from animals displaying an illness of some type and may paint a different picture.”
The surveillance involves testing milk from all New Zealand’s 12,000 dairy farms, in three rounds: first a sample of bulk milk from the tanker, followed by two samples -- two weeks apart -- of each farm’s discarded or mastitic milk.
O’Connor was speaking after 9100 of the bulk samples had been tested but before any results were available from the discard samples.
He said MPI is working with urgency to get a full picture of the scale and location of the disease so as to see clearly whether nationwide eradication is feasible and economically viable.
“MPI’s own tracing programme is a critical part of this. To date a vast web of some 1500 farms has been connected from animal movements, and more than 85,000 samples from at-risk herds have been tested. Clearly most of these farms have been ruled out from having the disease but the task is intensive and MPI has accelerated this work through additional laboratory and field capacity.”
O’Connor said the tracing programme was made more difficult by, it seems, many unrecorded calf movements around the Southland infection cluster.
MPI will soon start publicly encouraging farmers to report any at risk-animal movements that are not captured in recording systems such as NAIT.
MPI response coordinator David Yard stressed that ‘not detected’ meant only that the disease had not been found in the 9100 samples.
“There is a possibility that we have ‘silent shedders’ -- cows that aren’t shedding.” (He was speaking to Dairy News from Northland where he was attending meetings where the milk sampling packs were distributed to farmers.)
Yard could not give figures on farmers’ compliance with the testing but he believes their take-up has been good.
“Once we’ve explained what the benefits are to the industry and that we’re doing this for them, I think we’ve swung a lot of people over.”
60% of farmers invited to their district meetings had attended; absentees were followed up by their dairy companies.
It's been a bumper season for maize and other supplements in the eastern Bay of Plenty.
Leading farmers from around New Zealand connected to share environmental stories and inspiration and build relationships at the Dairy Environment Leaders (DEL) national forum in Wellington last month.
AgriZeroNZ, a joint venture fast-tracking emissions reduction tools for farmers, is pouring $5 million in a biotech company to develop a low emissions farm pasture with increased productivity gains.
Fonterra is teaming up with wealth app provider Sharesies to make it easier for its farmer shareholders to trade co-op shares among themselves.
Te Awamutu dairy farmers Doug, Penny, Josh and Bayley Storey have planted more than 25,000 native trees on the family farm, adding to a generations-old native forest.
OPINION: The Government's recent announcement that methane targets will be reviewed is bringing relief to farmers.
OPINION: Talking about plant-based food: “Chicken-free chicken” start-up Sunfed has had its valuation slashed to zero by major investor Blackbird…
OPINION: Synlait's financial woes won’t be going away anytime soon.