Rage at foot and mouth blunder

By PHILIPPA STEVENSON agricultural editor

The news organisation CNN has infuriated border officials by claiming that New Zealand has suspected cases of foot-and-mouth disease.

CNN, which claims 50 million viewers worldwide, put a story on its website last Friday falsely listing New Zealand and Australia as countries suspected of having cases of the contagious stock illness ravaging Britain.

Agricultural officials on both side of the Tasman were furious yesterday when the Herald alerted them to the blunder in a story on the British crisis by CNN correspondent David George.

Acting Biosecurity Minister Jim Sutton said New Zealand was fed up with its disease-free status being maligned by other countries.

CNN stablemate Time magazine reported in its March 12 edition that New Zealand "had largely eliminated" foot-and-mouth.

Mr Sutton said other countries needed to get it right.

New Zealand did not have foot-and-mouth and never had. Scrapie was eliminated 30 years ago.

"These are supposed to be pre-eminent media organisations. It is disappointing they are unable to access Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry or World Health Organisation websites, let alone ring our embassies, to check their facts.

"There are a lot of countries around the world who don't like the way New Zealand stands out as disease-free. We don't want to be tarred with their dirty brushes."

At the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, public relations manager David Finlayson said the information was clearly wrong in both cases.

Meat NZ spokeswoman Sue Miller said the industry organisation regarded the CNN error as very serious. Chief executive Neil Taylor had moved to contact CNN immediately to ask it to withdraw the wrong information and post a correction.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Meat NZ's overseas offices were alerted so they could handle any inquiries.

However, it is doubtful whether CNN was initially aware of the rage Down Under.

The global news service may beam into homes around the clock, but staff at its US headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, respond to telephone calls only between 9 am and 5 pm their time.

Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry spokesman Anthony Keesing phoned CNN at what would have been around 10 pm in Atlanta, but was told by a male with a southern drawl: "Aahm afraid arl the folks have gone home."



Federated Farmers had some success when policy analyst James Ryan posted a message on a CNN internet world message board correcting the factual error.



About 8 o'clock last night the offending paragraph was removed from the CNN story.

Several other websites carrying statements about foot-and-mouth and NZ had correct statements, raising the question of where CNN's David George got his information in the first place.

Farm and trade authorities have barely recovered from accusations that New Zealand sheep had scrapie which were carried last week in nearly 33 million pamphlets placed in German newspapers by the country's Central Marketing Association for Agriculture.

The claim also appeared on German websites.

UPDATE: CNN's correction

Herald Online feature: Foot-and-mouth disaster

UK outbreak map

World organisation for animal health

UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food

The European Commission for the Control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease

Pig Health/Foot and Mouth feature

Virus databases online