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.
Primary Industries Minister David Carter is welcoming a boost to New Zealand's biosecurity frontline with the graduation on Friday of 46 new recruits.
With training completed of the largest intake of border staff in over a decade, the Ministry for Primary Industries issued warrants to 43 new quarantine inspectors and three new detector dog handlers at a ceremony in Auckland.
"As the Government had planned, these new border staff will bring MPI's biosecurity frontline up to full strength and will help meet the demands of the summer peak season," says Carter.
"The quarantine inspectors and dog handlers are now ready to protect our primary industries and the Kiwi way of life by keeping unwanted pests and diseases out of the country."
The majority of the quarantine inspectors will be based in Auckland, and five will go to Wellington. The three new dog handlers will go to Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
Four existing warranted quarantine inspectors who have trained as dog handlers are also graduated. They will work with the 11 detector dogs that went through MPI's training centre earlier this year.
"Detector dogs and their handlers are an important part of our biosecurity frontline. The dogs' presence at the airport is a major factor, they are excellent at detecting seeds and plants that x-rays may miss, and they screen people faster than x-rays," Carter says.
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.