All's fair in NZ meat ads

WELLINGTON - Meat exporters will not try to capitalise on the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Korea and Japan, says Meat New Zealand's regional manager for Asia, Bill Joyce.

New Zealand would follow the same path as it did during the "mad cow" outbreak in Europe and would not "knock" other meat producers.

Normal marketing based on New Zealand's "clean and green" image would continue.

"The strategy is not to highlight the fact that New Zealand does not have foot and mouth - we don't want to take advantage of a fellow-producer's problems," said Mr Joyce.

"We have no intention of running a huge campaign to highlight the fact that we haven't got foot and mouth, while Japan has."

Japan's Agriculture Ministry said last week that an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease among cattle in southern Japan had been confirmed by tests in Britain. It is Japan's first outbreak of the disease since 1908.

Cattle on a small farm in Miyazaki prefecture on Japan's southern island of Kyushu were infected with the disease and have been destroyed. But a second suspected case of the disease has been found on another farm in the same region, heightening fears of an epidemic.

South Korea's Government quarantine service has confirmed that a livestock illness reported near the town of Paju last week was foot-and-mouth disease.

Foot-and-mouth disease infects cloven-hoofed animals through their respiratory tracts and produces lesions in mouths and on feet. It is potentially fatal and highly contagious but cannot be transmitted to humans. - NZPA