Why our future depends on taking biosecurity seriously
OPINION: When it comes to biosecurity, we often hear about the end of a response, but it’s the beginning that helps determine our success.
Farmers’ stance on biosecurity is going to have to change, said Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor in a recent television interview.
He told Q&A that the previous government had gone softly softly on prosecutions of breaches of NAIT instead of sending a clear, strong message -- for the right reasons.
Now he insists his and MPI’s stance will be enforcement when the law is blatantly ignored.
O’Connor ssays farmers now appreciate that we are all in the same boat, needing good traceability systems and biosecurity.
“If we do this together we will have a more robust system. Clearly there have been failures but it’s no good pointing fingers now; we have to focus on the future.”
He doesn’t blame dairy farmers for the way the industry has expanded; the law and the circumstances were lax and farmers grew the industry as they saw fit.
“The signals to farmers were a bit mixed and muddled; we have tried to make clear to them that we want to get more from what they do now, which means more value from the raw products they produce.
“The previous government said ‘double exports’ so everyone just rushed out to double their efforts; but in fact what we really needed to do was focus on more value from what we were doing. That is the focus of our government.” – Peter Burke
NZPork has appointed Auckland-based Paul Bucknell as its new chair.
The Government claims to have delivered on its election promise to protect productive farmland from emissions trading scheme (ETS) but red meat farmers aren’t happy.
Foot and Mouth Disease outbreaks could have a detrimental impact on any country's rural sector, as seen in the United Kingdom's 2000 outbreak that saw the compulsory slaughter of over six million animals.
The Ministry for the Environment is joining as a national award sponsor in the Ballance Farm Environment Awards (BFEA from next year).
Kiwis are wasting less of their food than they were two years ago, and this has been enough to push New Zealand’s total household food waste bill lower, the 2025 Rabobank KiwiHarvest Food Waste survey has found.
OPINION: Sir Lockwood Smith has clearly and succinctly defined what academic freedom is all about, the boundaries around it and the responsibility that goes with this privilege.
OPINION: Should cows in NZ be microchipped?
OPINION: Legislation being drafted to bring back the controversial trade of live animal exports by sea is getting stuck in the…