Formula blackmail 'likely to backfire'

Bay of Plenty National MP Todd Muller

The debate about the use of 1080 is heating up after the infant formula blackmail scare but a local politician says the blackmailer's actions are likely to backfire.

Both Federated Farmers and Fonterra received anonymous letters in November threatening to contaminate infant formula milk powder unless New Zealand stopped using 1080 for pest control by March 27.

Prime Minister John Key made the threat public on Tuesday.

Former Fonterra group director and Bay of Plenty National MP Todd Muller said he supported the approach taken by Mr Key. It was important the police were given the chance to try to catch the blackmailer, he said. Mr Muller said the three-month delay before going public also allowed time for Fonterra and other players in the industry to implement new safety measures.

"Fonterra does five million quality assurance tests within the supply chain a year and since this threat it has conducted 40,000 tests in the past three months specifically to check for traces of 1080, with no positive results," he said,

Mr Muller said Fonterra, along with other milk powder manufacturers in the industry, had stepped up strengthening of quality assurances processes.

"I'd like to believe this threat is a hoax and the risk is negligible but whoever has done this is extremely misguided and, in my view, despicable as they have made a conscious decision to prey on people's fears and put New Zealand's trade representation at risk ... The decision to try to hold the country to ransom has already been overwhelmingly condemned on both sides of the 1080 debate," he said

Mr Muller said if the culprit was attempting to gain new members to join their anti-1080 campaign it was likely to do the reverse and backfire.

Pro-1080 supporter Neale Blaymires owns a 16ha property in Te Puke, which is home to wood pigeons and other native birdlife. Mr Blaymires said modern 1080 operations had greatly improved in terms of efficiency and effort goes into reducing the risks to birdlife and other native species.

There was research which proved 1080 pest control was the most efficient and cost effective method of eradicating pests such as possums, stoats, and rats, and significantly boosted native bird life populations, he said.

Mr Blaymires said the blackmail threat was unlikely to change people's minds in terms of the debate.

Meanwhile, supermarkets have tightened their security measures in light of the threat.

At Foodstuffs stores - New World, Pak N' Save and Four Square - customers entering the store are now subject to heightened surveillance and extra security measures.

Some increased security was covert, Foodstuff's corporate PR director Antoinette Laird said.

In smaller New Worlds and Four Square stores the infant formula has been moved to the front of the checkout.

Countdown's acting managing director Steve Donohue also said extra security was in place, which applied from the time the product arrived in its distribution centres to when bought by a customer.

Plunket's chief operating officer Andrea McLeod said PlunketLine staff had all been briefed on information from the Ministry of Primary Industries, the Police and the Ministry of Health. The Bay of Plenty Times contacted a member of the Tauranga Deerstalkers' Association yesterday, but he referred our inquiries to the national headquarters for comment.

No one from the New Zealand Deerstalkers' Association or Tauranga Sports Fishing Club could be contacted for comment when the newspaper went to print last night.