TB control plan under fire

“The spreading of 1080 poison is flawed, ill-conceived, failed and ecologically destructive,” says the West Coast dairy farmer, Mary Molloy, who formed FATE.

However, OSPRI NZ, which manages the TBfree programme on behalf of New Zealand farmers and the public, rebuffs these claims.

OSPRI NZ general manager Peter Alsop says its programme has resulted in a reduction of infected cattle and deer herds from around 1700 in the late 1990s to the current level of under 50 herds. 

“TB infection in possums causes about 70% of herd infections. The remaining infections are caused by movement of undetected TB in cattle or deer, but those infections are also likely to have initially been generated by infected wildlife.” 

He says there is a large body of scientific evidence about TB infection in possums and how it is spread.

“Even if there are no infected cattle and deer, unless TB is eradicated from the possum population, TB infections in cattle and deer can return,” Alsop adds. 

He adds the programme is running effectively and ahead of predictions, both with regards to infected herds (an all-time low of less than 50) and the area of land free of TB (about 1 million ha). 

Molloy points to claims by NZ First MP Richard Prosser in Parliament recently that TB-infected possums exist at low, insignificant rates of 0.04%. She believes Prosser deserves praise for putting into the public arena the wasteful and incompetent policies and administration involved in TB eradication.

“The current TB testing which gives rise to undetected infectious bovine TB and ‘sleeper animals’ gives no confidence to farmers,” Molloy claims.

She says under the current regime, TB in herds or bought-in stock escape testing at a rate of nearly 30% and are falsely identified at nearly 30%.

“Perfectly healthy young stock are killed most years and found to have no TB, but leaving undetected and infectious animals in farm herds. On top of that grossly inefficient system, the authorities by specious reasoning, with science lacking, then turn to 1080 poison as the solution.”

Molloy says it’s easy to erroneously make the connection to possums if an infected marsupial is found.  

“The reality is possums are not infected almost everywhere. Remember, what maintains TB in the wild is inherently farmed cattle and deer with undetected infectious bovine TB.”

But Alsop says the figures quoted by Prosser relate to how many TB-infected possums are caught and then examined to determine whether they have TB. 

“Where we know TB exists in wildlife, our focus is on controlling the disease through possum [killing], not on spending money unnecessarily capturing and examining possums for signs of disease,” he explains. 

“In other areas, where the programme is getting close to eradicating the disease, the emphasis switches to surveillance work to carefully prove that the disease no longer exists – a process that does require individual possum capture and examination.”

Alsop adds that finding fewer and fewer infected possums, and fewer and fewer infected herds, is a positive sign OSPRI’s programme is working and is a good outcome for NZ. 

Meanwhile, Molloy has called for a new culture under OSPRI where farm strategies are shared with all farmers especially those who buy in infected stock or have a herd which in the absence of TB-infected possums appears to break down regularly.

“We need strategies for lessening stress on animals to remove the likelihood of TB breakdown on farms,” she says.