Mycoplasma bovis are two words that most of us had probably never heard of a few months back. They're certainly two words that the Beehive wished they'd never heard of but they're two words that most dairy farmers would have heard of and would have lived in dread of.
In recent decades this country has become the land of milk and money with dairy exports at $14 billion a year far outstripping any other export sector.
So the dairy herd, despite all the the environmental critics, is vital to this country.
Today the Prime Minister will hold something of a themed post-Cabinet news conference, down at Federated Farmers rather than in the Beehive. It's to show they're working closely and in collaboration with those most closely associated with this dreadful disease, the dairy farmers.
For them this has become an emotional roller coaster with cow cockies being closer to their animals than any other considering they generally engage with each of them twice a day as they hook up the milking machines.