RWNZ chief executive to step down
Rural Women New Zealand (RWNZ) chief executive Gabrielle O’Brien will step down at the end of June.
The Government's so called 'consolidation of Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) from meat companies has the potential to force the closure of some meat processing plants if staff contract the Omicron version of Covid.
Many meat processing companies took the precaution of purchasing their own RATs as a means of protecting their staff and keeping their works going in a Covid outbreak. However, because, on the Government's behalf, the Ministry of Health failed to get sufficient supplies in on time, it effectively pilfered what it could from the private sector.
Meat Industry Association (MIA) policy manager Paul Goldstone told Rural News that meat companies had purchased the now Government-appropriated RATs as a means of screening workers and preventing the virus getting into plants. He says an Omicron outbreak would be disastrous for the sector and could lead to whole plants being closed down.
Goldstone says the RAT issue is also linked to the rules around home isolation. He points out some workers live in households where there are large numbers of people of varying age groups, who all work in the meat sector.
Goldstone says the current government rules on isolation pose a serious risk to the meat industry.
"We have been pushing hard for some realism with the current criteria," he told Rural News. "A single positive case of Covid in a worker or a household member could result in that entire household being isolated for 10 days."
Goldstone says this could see large parts of a plant being put into isolation and likely shut down.
"We were going to be using RATs to act as a form of screening to prevent infected workers getting on site," he explains. "The meat companies purchased RATs to minimise this risk, but without them, plants are now at risk and so are valuable meat exports."
A vet is calling for all animals to be vaccinated against a new strain of leptospirosis (lepto) discovered on New Zealand dairy farms in recent years.
Two major red meat sector projects are getting up to a combined $1.7 million in funding from the New Zealand Meat Board (NZMB).
Angus Barr and Tara Dwyer of The Wandle, Lone Star Farms in Strath Taieri have been named the Regional Supreme Winners at the Otago Ballance Farm Environment Awards in Dunedin.
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