M.I.A.
OPINION: The previous government spent too much during the Covid-19 pandemic, despite warnings from officials, according to a briefing released by the Treasury.
Get vaccinated - that's the message from the National Secretary of the Meat Workers Union to his members.
Daryl Carran says the union is quite clear that, as the meat industry is an essential industry, workers should be vaccinated.
He says while there is no mandatory requirement for this now, the idea of a mandatory health declaration to this effect would not be a bad thing.
Carran's come as the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) works on the details of requiring vaccinations within the primary sector workforce in situations where it will help to safeguard market access. MPI is currently having discussions with industry to frame up what this might mean in practice.
There's currently no legal requirement for mandatory vaccinations for market access purposes.
Carran says, from what he's heard, vaccination rates for meat industry workers varies from region to region.
"The further north in the country you go it would appear the vaccination rates are lower," he told Rural News.
Carran says he'd like to see a significant lift in vaccination rates for Maori and Pasifika workers who form the majority of the workforce in the industry in the North Island.
"Having a mandatory vaccination policy is not a bad thing when you have people working shoulder to shoulder in quite adverse climatic conditions within large or even small factories," he adds.
One of the concerns around Covid vaccinations that Carran raises is being talked about right across the primary sector: That is the risk of NZ products being rejected by a key market - such as China - because workers in a plant are not vaccinated, or worse that there is an outbreak of Covid in a plant.
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.
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