May 24, 2004

 

 

New Zealand Pig Farmers May Have To Pay 69c/animal To Control Disease

 

New Zealand's pork industry leaders believe farmers may have to pay 69c an animal to keep a pig-wasting disease out of the South Island.

 

The Pork Industry Board (PIB) has completed a series of meetings with farmers from around New Zealand to gauge support for a strategy to contain, and possibly eradicate, Post-Weaning Multisystemic Wasting Syndrome (PMWS), which affects young pigs.

 

MAF is unwilling to commit funds, and has argued that it would be impossible to completely eliminate the syndrome because there was currently no screening test to prove if it has been successful.

 

This has left the PIB to ask pig farmers to commit between 33c and 69c per pig slaughtered, for a seven to 10-year period.

 

PIB chairman Chris Trengrove said the industry would not attempt to contain the disease without believing there was a good chance of success.

 

He stressed there was no food or human safety issue, and that the syndrome existed in every pig-producing nation apart from Australia.

 

"There are movement controls in the South Island which prevent stock crossing the Cook Strait. It is a disease spread from pig to pig so there is some confidence that we can contain it."

 

"We would be reasonably confident we could keep it out of the South Island."

 

Southern farms so far remain clear of the syndrome, a combination of diseases which has hit mainly the Waikato region.

 

North Island pigs and pig products are prevented from crossing Cook Strait, and inspections of 50 southern piggeries earlier this year by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) failed to find any evidence of the disease.

 

Mr Trengrove said the PIB continued to have a good relationship with MAF, but was frustrated with the (Biosecurity) Act and the period of up to two years that it would take to get a pest strategy through.

 

"Basically the horse could have bolted by the time you get the tools to control or eradicate a disease."

 

He said South Island pig farmers were concerned that the syndrome would spread south.

 

The disease was discovered at an Orini property, east of Huntly, last September, but the industry board said it had has been in New Zealand since 1999, when overseas pig meat was increasingly entering the country.

 

The board's theory is that pigs in the Auckland area were fed waste food containing infected pork products, and the disease was spread by stock movements among a network of farms.

 

In 1998 MAF let lapse restrictions requiring piggeries to cook waste feed before it was fed to animals.

 

Mr Trengrove said MAF's confidence that border restrictions were robust enough to keep pig diseases out has since been proved wrong.

 

"We have lobbied since, telling them they have made a mistake, and in 2001 they put restrictions in place that pig meat had to be cooked.

 

"Now they are putting in place new regulations to govern waste feed use, so we will have come full circle."

 

The new regulations being drafted by MAF included stiff penalties, and the onus would inevitably fall back on pig farmers, he said.

 

The disease syndrome causes wasting and mortalities in six to 12-week-old pigs, but so far it did not appear to be as virulent in New Zealand as in other countries.

 

Farmers could learn to live with the disease, but would never get rid of it without completely "depopulating" all stock -- an option few could afford, Mr Trengrove said.