Authorities are no closer to saying if the threat to poison baby formula with 1080 was a hoax, or who wrote the blackmail threats - even with 30 staff on the case.

Police are testing infant formula after a number of tins were found with pin-pricks in packaging lids.

The decision to refuse to tell parents what they knew or that they were opting to take a lunatic at his word that the poisoning wouldn't begin until the end of March, was despicable, writes Josie Pagani.

Dairy companies are confident security measures at their facilities are tight enough to prevent a 1080 contamination.

Fallout from this week's baby formula contamination threat weighed heavily on the New Zealand dollar yesterday, with news of curtailed orders from China driving the currency lower still.

The Government was right to say nothing until discreet inquiries had failed and there is a chance a public appeal might help police catch him. The interval appears to have permitted the industry to be well prepared.

Dairy exports may already be stuck on Chinese wharves as a result of a new import requirement that products be tested for 1080 contamination, says an industry group.

ANZ has admitted misleading conduct over interest rate swaps and up to 178 farmers will now have to decide whether to accept their share of $18.5 million from the bank.

Federated Farmers is questioning the need for a National Party proposal for a compulsory ban on dairy cattle from all waterways.

Rogue dairy farmers exploiting migrant workers have no place in the industry, a senior farming leader says.

Labour's Shadow Minister of Finance David Parker looked the part in delivering his party's monetary policy.

National is set to have two former tobacco industry lobbyists standing for Parliament this year with the selection of Todd Barclay in the safe seat of Clutha-Southland.

Fonterra has posted a 53pc drop in interim net profit as high dairy commodity prices hit the dairy co-op's margins.

While the timing of this is far from ideal given last year's events, this voluntary recall came from Fonterra's own testing, writes Willy Leferink.

Many city-dwellers may still peg rural women as domestic types, but modern farming women are on the land or in the office, running big businesses and driving the exports that are the backbone of NZ's economy.

A genetics company which provided defect bull semen to farmers last year has received a warning from the Commerce Commission about its marketing.

The head of Federated Farmers has apologised to Chinese dairy consumers over Fonterra's botulism scare.

"Was the Fonterra milk scandal caused by New Zealand being 'hostage to a blinkered devotion to laissez-faire market ideology'?" asks Bryce Edwards.

"There will be a reckoning, but now is not the time." Federated Farmers breaks its silence on the infant formula contamination scare.

Leaky homes, free market devotion and a 'festering sore' of a tourism campaign - New Zealand is coming under fire in the state-sanctioned Chinese media.

Federated Farmers says news that FrieslandCampina of the Netherlands had taken a 7.5% stake in Canterbury's Synlait Milk could herald a shakeup for the NZ dairy industry.

A new deal between New Zealand and China to promote agricultural cooperation between the two countries is an important step forward with the export destination, says Federated Farmers.