Gavin says to some extent the Mycoplasma bovis response has been run like a GIA (Government Industry Agreement) biosecurity process.
"MPI has been very good at involving industry representatives in a governance group for high-level decision making, as well as the technical working group.
"So Federated Farmers has been working alongside the likes of MPI, NZVA, DairyNZ, Beef + Lamb NZ, Massey and DCANZ."
While MPI got seriously busy with containment and investigation activity, within 24 hours of notification of the disease Federated Farmers gathered a wide range of industry representatives and participants in our Wellington boardroom and by teleconference to make sure everyone was on the same page in terms of actions and communication.
Crucially, we were able to bring in early an expert from Australia to join the conference call.
The executive team at Federated Farmers Dairy has over the years met up with their dairy farming counterparts on the other side of the Tasman. They have spent these meetings talking over common issues and helped each other out on some of the more difficult ones.
We knew that Australia is one of the many countries that has been living with and managing this disease, so we capitalised on those connections and called for help when we were informed of the detection of Mycoplasma bovis on a South Canterbury farm.
Dairy Australia linked us with a professor at Sydney University, John House, who had carried out research on the organism and the disease for some years, and they sent us a number of fact sheets prepared by Dairy Australia for their farmers.
"No criticism at all of MPI, but in that first day or two as they concentrated on the site of the outbreak and immediate neighbours, farmers in the wider district - and indeed around New Zealand - were in a bit of a vacuum," Gavin says.
"Naturally enough, farmers were wondering 'what does this mean for me?'.
"That's where we felt we could be most useful, using our contacts and delivering that information. John House isn't just a clinical expert but someone who has dealt with the disease on the ground. He understands farmers and worked with farmers across the Tasman on controlling the disease."
Gavin says Professor House became "the calming voice of reason" as he carefully but firmly worked through the disease implications, and lessons we might learn from the Australia experience.
He proved so useful that New Zealand brought him across for four or five days, and much of his advice was later included in guidance sheets to farmers issued by MPI.
"We established early on that mycoplasma is not one of those diseases that can be spread by blowing in the wind. It requires close animal to animal contact, so establishing setbacks on farm boundaries was one of the practical precautions we advised."
Since the outbreak Federated Farmers has been involved in daily teleconferences with the MPI working group, and our board member and biosecurity spokesman Guy Wigley has been in contact with the affected farmers and others in the district, giving support and advocacy assistance.
The Feds also had representatives at the two community meetings MPI organised in South Canterbury and we continue to share information with members as we get it.
On the deadline for this issue of NFR, MPI was carrying out extensive and thorough testing to establish where the disease is present.
Ministry director of response Geoff Gwyn said this was being done in a planned manner, based on prioritising risks and ensuring rigorous sampling and testing protocols were followed.
Thirteen days into the process, the MPI's lab had already processed around 1200 samples.
Testing continues on 16 Van Leeuwen Dairy Group (VLDG) farms. Two of those farms had tested positive as at August 7. There are 62 properties bordering the VLDG farms, and MPI will be testing all that have cattle on them.
Confirmed results for nine of the bordering farms were available by August 7, all being negative for Mycoplasma bovis.
"This is good news, but further testing on these farms will be required before they can be declared free of the disease and we expect testing to take several months.
"The disease doesn't always present symptoms so we need to take two sets of samples one month apart, and possibly a third depending on those results," Geoff said.
"I realise that farmers are keen to get answers as soon as possible. Our labs teams are working quickly and thoroughly seven days a week, and we have increased staff numbers to carry out the work. On average, the process takes up to seven days from taking the sample on-farm, to getting back to the farmer with the results."
It's also important to find out if the disease is already occurring in other parts of the country.
To do this MPI is working with regional veterinary laboratories, Massey University and animal industry bodies to collect and analyse samples, including milk from cows that have mastitis, discard milk and routine bulk milk samples.
The first samples from the regional laboratories were to arrive at MPI's Animal Health Laboratory last week.
* For further information on Mycoplasma bovis, including the fact sheets Practice Good Biosecurity and Farmer Guide to Protection on Your Farm, visit mpi.govt.nz and search 'bovis'.
