MAY 26 2018 LISTENER 3

EDITORIAL

Farming in the dark

I

t almost seems like the stuff of science fiction: a debilitat-

ing epidemic spreads unseen and stays several steps ahead

of efforts to contain it. But the cow disease Mycoplasma

bovis is not part of a far-fetched plot in a Hollywood film.

For the rural sector, it has become a real-life horror story.

Agriculture minister Damien O’Connor bluntly describes it

as a disaster.

It’s a crisis with heartbreaking personal consequences as

well as serious economic dimensions. Good farmers care deeply

for their livestock, and few people would not have been moved

by the sight of a Canterbury farmer almost in tears as he talked

of his infected herd, painstakingly built up over decades of

careful breeding, having to be slaughtered. This was the human

face of an industry often pilloried for greed and environmental

vandalism.

New Zealanders heard of the disease for the first time when it

was identified on a South Canterbury farm

in the middle of last year. M bovis poses no

food-safety risk, but it’s serious enough to

require the culling of infected stock. Symp-

toms include lameness, arthritis, mastitis,

abortions, and pneumonia in calves.

How the disease got here isn’t known, but

European farmers have lived with it for many

years and, until last year, New Zealand was

the world’s only major dairying nation to have escaped it.

At first, the Ministry for Primary Industries seemed confident

the disease could be quarantined and eradicated. But as reports

of infected herds multiplied, that hope looked more and more

forlorn. Now, the disease has been confirmed as present in the

dairying heartland, Waikato, and the crisis assumes new urgency

with the approach of June 1 – “Gypsy Day”, when sharemilkers

move their herds to new farms. That raises the possibility that

the infection, which for the most part remains invisible, will

unknowingly be spread even more widely.

Briefing MPs on the crisis, BioSecurity New Zealand chief Roger

Smith theatrically announced that M bovis could be wiped out,

but only by slaughtering six million cows and closing down

the dairy industry – after tourism, New Zealand’s biggest source

of export income. That was as good as saying that officials had

given up on the idea of eradication and the emphasis must now

shift to containment.

It’s not an outcome that any New Zealand farmer wants, but

the outlook isn’t totally dismal. European farmers have learnt

how to manage the disease, and there’s no reason why their New

Zealand counterparts can’t do the same.

T

he agriculture sector can look to its own successful record

of combating bovine tuberculosis, which affected 1700

cattle and deer herds in the 1990s but is now at an all-

time low. Farmers can also take some encouragement from

what happened in the kiwifruit industry: threatened with

devastation by the vine disease Psa, it mounted a co-ordinated

response and has bounced back spectacularly. Similarly,

beekeepers have accepted that they can’t eradicate the para-

sitic varroa mite, once seen as potentially ruinous, but have

found ways to keep infestations to manageable levels.

In the meantime, though, the dairy industry is hurting. Angry

and anxious farmers have turned on the

ministry. Some have accused it of over-

reacting; others say it was too complacent.

A recurring criticism is that potentially

affected farmers were given insufficient

information about the risk they faced. Every

crisis brings its lessons and the MPI has

faced an unusually sharp learning curve.

What is, perhaps, more surprising is that

farmer has turned against farmer, some claiming to have been

kept in the dark by neighbours whose herds were infected. It

seems clear, too, that some farmers have traded livestock on the

black market, hampering efforts to trace infected animals. But it’s

not a straightforward case of an irresponsible minority putting

at risk the well-being of an entire industry; an estimated 70%

of otherwise law-abiding farmers have been too casual about

fulfilling their obligations under the National Animal Identifica-

tion and Tracing (Nait) scheme. They must therefore accept some

responsibility for the difficulties faced by authorities trying to

track infected animals. That is another hard lesson.

To use an overworked phrase, farmers and the ministry have

been given a very unpleasant wake-up call. How the Government

and the country respond to this crisis, particularly at a time when

traditional links between town and country are so much weaker

than they were in the past, will be a revealing test of our national

solidarity. l

1 NEWS

Angry farmers have

turned on the ministry,

variously accusing

it of overreacting or

complacency.