Farmers, not truckies, are the ``major cause'' of problems with livestock waste spilling on to roads and highways, the Road Transport Forum says.
Farmers should ``stand'' their sheep and cattle -- take them off grazing -- for at least six hours before they travel. But a survey of 204 truckers released at this weekend's annual conference found in about 42 percent of livestock this had ``definitely'' not occurred.
``If stock isn't stood before transport, the risk of on-road spillages is greatly increased,'' chief executive Ken Shirley said.
Truckers were ``fed up'' with being blamed by other motorists for messy deposits of animal manure found on roads, he said.
The forum's own survey contradicted a recent one by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, which blamed stock transport operators for failing to empty their holding tanks before transporting livestock.
``The first principle of waste management is to minimise the incidence at source. That means all farmers standing stock as they should,'' Mr Shirley said.
Failing to do this caused problems not only for truck operators but for councils and ratepayers, who were obliged to provide public sites for trucks to empty their effluent tanks.
``The more effluent there is, the more disposal sites are needed. A site can easily cost $150,000 plus the ongoing expense of maintaining it.''
Federated Farmers dairy spokesman Lachlan McKenzie said he agreed with the guidelines and the two groups needed to work together to tackle ``errant'' farmers.
However, at times farmers were notified too late.
``I've personally been notified at 9 o'clock or 8 o'clock at night that the stock are going at 8 o'clock the next morning,'' he said.
There were three issues: sufficient notification, farmers understanding how important it was and how to handle non-complying farmers.
``If farmers are non-complying, we'd like the Road Transport Forum to communicate back to the farmer directly, or to us, so we can communicate it back to farmers.''
``A cow can eat 40kg of food a day, that's a lot of fermenting grass that's sitting inside the stomach there... A sheep can eat about 3-4kg a day, so you've got a lot of those, 500 sheep on a truck, that's a lot of effluent that can be produced.
``People have got to work together... and if there is some errant people through the sector, then we have to work together about how we fix those errant people.''
Southland had recently showed what could be achieved when farmers are made aware of their obligations, Mr Shirley said. After it was raised by the Southland Regional Council, there were only ``one or two'' spillages reported during June when herds traditionally change farms, he said -- ``a remarkable achievement considering the number of stock moved''.
Truckies ``fed up'' with being blamed for animal poo spills
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