"Our" business?
OPINION: One particular bone the Hound has been gnawing on for years now is how the chattering classes want it both ways when it comes to the success of NZ's dairy industry.
Dairy industry leaders have welcomed the successful prosecution of a businessman who threatened to spike infant formula with 1080.
Jeremy Kerr, the owner of another pest-control product, Feratox, mixed highly concentrated 1080 with baby milk formula and posted them to Fonterra and to Federated Farmers. Included in the package was a letter demanding the country stop using 1080 or he would release poisoned infant milk powder into the Chinese market
and one unspecified market.
He was jailed last week for eight and a half years by Justice Geoffrey Venning, who said the potential impact of his actions on New Zealand's trade relationship with China and others was "extremely serious".
The threat is believed to have cost Fonterra nearly $20 million and cost Federated Farmers nearly $100,000.
In his victim impact statement, Feds chief executive Graham Smith said Kerr's actions were "a direct threat to the very fabric of society".
The threat could have led to an international ban on NZ food products, he says.
"The 1080 threat had the potential to devastate our ability to successfully operate within these markets and would have cost the country billions of dollars. Customers would have stopped buying and using our products due to their immediate safety concerns."
There was a potential threat to all sectors of society, given NZ's reliance on primary industries, Smith says.
Fonterra chairman John Wilson said Kerr's actions were deplorable and had a huge impact on the cooperative and other food firms.
Fonterra's Maury Leyland says the threat had a big impact on Fonterra and it staff.
"It's hard to imagine a worse threat to children and families, or to the viability of our co-operative, the wider dairy industry and our country," said Leyland, who is Fonterra's outgoing managing director of people, culture and safety.
Phoebe Scherer, a technical manager from the Bay of Plenty, has won the 2025 Young Grower of the Year national title.
The Fencing Contractors Association of New Zealand (FCANZ) celebrated the best of the best at the 2025 Fencing Industry Awards, providing the opportunity to honour both rising talent and industry stalwarts.
Award-winning boutique cheese company, Cranky Goat Ltd has gone into voluntary liquidation.
As an independent review of the National Pest Management Plan for TB finds the goal of complete eradication by 2055 is still valide, feedback is being sought on how to finish the job.
Beef + Lamb New Zealand has launched an AI-powered digital assistant to help farmers using the B+LNZ Knowledge Hub to create tailored answers and resources for their farming businesses.
A tiny organism from the arid mountains of mainland Greece is facilitating a new way of growing healthier animals on farms across New Zealand.
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