Building trust
OPINION: The war of words between Southland farmers and Environment Southland over winter grazing inspections reflects a deep lack of trust among farmers for the regional council.
President Katie Milne says the Federation’s position is that anything that can be done to improve the system and make it more effective and easier for farmers to use will be valuable.
“We don’t believe that the recommendations should be treated as some sort of smorgasbord, to pick and choose from. The comprehensive suite of recommendations has been closely debated and scrutinised by experts and industry body representatives and they deserve to be adopted as a whole,” she says.
Milne says Feds members look forward to contributing to the consultation process when it begins in June.
Obvious answers
The 58-page report is a statement of the obvious and the 38 recommendations a fix for what many people have been saying for some time. It calls for NAIT and MPI to sort out their respective responsibilities and tell the industry.
It calls on NAIT to develop mobile applications and lightweight web application for improved access by end users and it wants all calves, including bobby calves, to be tagged if they leave the farm of birth prior to six months of age and are not consigned direct to slaughter. It also calls for NAIT to develop a streamlined and simplified process for animal registration.
Other recommendations include NAIT developing a centralised system for the reporting and monitoring of tag losses. And it recommends that NAIT tag suppliers and information providers be required to provide information to farmers on tag replacement.
OSPRI’s Michelle Edge says the review involved representatives of Beef + Lamb NZ, DairyNZ, DCANZ, Deer Industry NZ, Federated Farmers, the Meat Industry Association, the Ministry for Primary Industries and OSPRI.
The working group was supported by a technical user group of farmers, and representatives of MPI, OSPRI and companies.
