The Government has signed off a new long-term plan to wipe out bovine tuberculosis from New Zealand cattle, deer and the possums that spread it, with a target of eradicating the disease by 2040.
Biosecurity Minister Andrew Hoggard announced the approval of the new National Pest Management Plan on 3 June, saying the country is now closer than it has ever been to seeing the back of a disease that has shadowed farming for generations. Only 16 infected herds remain across the whole country, down from thousands at the height of the problem in the 1990s, and the new plan is designed to push that number to zero and keep it there.
Bovine TB is a slow, wasting bacterial disease that infects cattle and farmed deer. It can shut a farm out of the trade that pays its bills, because infected herds face movement restrictions and repeated testing, and because New Zealand’s reputation as a clean source of beef, dairy and venison depends on staying on top of it. What makes the New Zealand fight unusual is the role of the brushtail possum, an introduced Australian pest that acts as a wild reservoir for the disease and passes it back into farmed animals. Knock the disease out of cattle and deer and it will simply creep back unless the possum problem is dealt with at the same time.
That is why the new plan puts wild animals at the centre. Hoggard said possums are the main way TB spreads to farmed cattle and deer, so the plan will focus on eradicating the disease from both possums and livestock by 2040. The work will concentrate on a handful of stubborn hot spots where infected possums still hang on, in the central North Island, Hawke’s Bay and Otago. In those areas, sustained possum control over several years is the tool that breaks the chain, because once possum numbers are held low enough for long enough the disease has nowhere left to live.
The plan will cost about 60 million dollars a year for the next five years, with farmers picking up 60 percent of the bill and the Government covering the remaining 40 percent. That cost share reflects the unusual structure of the programme, which has long been run as a partnership between the primary sector and the Crown rather than as a straight government scheme. The work is administered by OSPRI through its TBfree programme, the not-for-profit body jointly owned by farming organisations and the Government.
Alongside the eradication push, the plan changes the way farmers are tested. The programme is moving away from blanket TB testing of every herd towards more targeted surveillance, using existing data and technology to focus the testing where the risk actually sits. Hoggard said the shift will reduce compliance and costs for farmers by using existing technology and data to focus testing where it is most needed. For a farmer in a low-risk part of the country, that should mean fewer visits from testers and less time spent yarding stock, while the resources go to the places where infected animals are most likely to turn up.
The changes follow a governance review of the programme, which recommended the new approach after public meetings and webinars with farmers and rural communities. Progress under the plan will be reviewed before 2031 to work out what funding will be needed for the long haul, a checkpoint that matters because the final years of any eradication effort are usually the hardest and most expensive. Driving a disease down to a handful of cases is one thing. Finding and finishing off the last hidden pockets, in rough back-country where infected possums can sit undetected, is another.
New Zealand has been chipping away at this goal for decades. The programme set itself the aim of freeing livestock herds of the disease by 2026 and clearing it from possums by 2040, on the way to a longer ambition of being able to declare the country biologically free of bovine TB by the middle of the century. Reaching the 2040 milestone would put New Zealand among a very small group of countries to have eradicated the disease from its wildlife, an achievement that other farming nations, many of which are still struggling with TB in badgers, deer and other wild hosts, have not managed.
There is plenty riding on getting it right. Bovine TB control protects the value of exports that underpin a large slice of the rural economy, and it protects individual farmers from the financial and personal toll of having an infected herd. It is also one of the rare pieces of biosecurity policy that tends to unite rather than divide, because nobody in the sector wants the disease back and the gains of the past 30 years are visible in those falling herd numbers.
With an election due later this year, biosecurity and the cost pressures on farming are likely to feature in the campaign. If you want to see where the parties stand on rural and primary sector issues before you cast your vote, you can compare their positions using our voting tool.
What do you make of the plan to wipe out bovine TB by 2040, and the move to lighter-touch testing for low-risk farms? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
Leave a Reply