Mid Canterbury farmer Duncan Barr has no confidence that lessons will be learnt from an independent review aimed at reducing the impact of future animal disease and pest incursions in New Zealand.
The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) commissioned the review, with the independent panel charged by the Mycoplasma bovis governance group, to conduct a forward-looking review to inform biosecurity readiness and response to incursions.
A key objective was to consider lessons learnt from the M bovis eradication programme that will help strengthen NZ’s readiness and response to disease and pest incursions, now and in the future.
The review panel acknowledges in its report that no response will ever follow a predictable plan, but in 2017 when the cattle disease M bovis struck, NZ’s readiness and response system was not as well prepared as it was thought to be.
The M bovis eradication programme had to evolve and overcome a range of issues with data tracing problems, untested partnership arrangements and uncertain science.
The panel found the response to M bovis was a significant test of the capacity and capability of the livestock sector and MPI.
“Given that M bovis is a relatively slow-moving disease with minimal impacts on trade, the lessons learnt from managing this incursion should be treated as a significant opportunity to strengthen NZ’s biosecurity preparedness,” the report said.
“The panel is confident that the lessons learnt from M bovis, if acted upon, will enable NZ to have a far stronger biosecurity preparedness platform for future animal disease incursions.”
Barr says the “if acted upon” is the key.
The farmer advocate was struck with M bovis on his Mid Canterbury farm in 2018 and says he has no more confidence in bureaucratic management now than he did four years ago.
“It would be nice to think it (review) would make a change, but history says no,” Barr said.
“The problem in this country is the bureaucrats go around making a hash of things, supposedly take learnings, shelve it and the same thing happens over again.
“I’ve learnt the bureaucrats live in one world, farmers live in a different world, and they (bureaucrats) don’t know how to talk to farmers.”
He says it is not necessarily what they did, it is how they did it that has created mountains of stress for farmers.
“Instead of taking people on a journey they have dictated, it wears you down after a while,” he said.
“There was a lot of fear mongering, the biggest issue was the unknown, farmers were entering the process with trepidation.
“I was all for eradication thinking the process wouldn’t be too bad, that sadly wasn’t the case.”
Barr describes the independent review as a “bit of a snow job”.
“It has covered over the reality of a poorly implemented bureaucratic process,” he said.
“MPI was not prepared for a large-scale biosecurity response, it was woefully inadequate.”
He says mindset comes from two perspectives.
“Farmers are solutions-focused, the bureaucrats are problem-focused,” he said,
“Every farmer that entered the process knew what hurdles they had to jump over, what they weren’t prepared for was the lack of trust from the bureaucrats with a complete lack of knowledge of what they were dealing with.
“It was like someone had designed a playbook with a tick box exercise; it was a situation of the left hand not knowing the right hand existed – terrible, just bloody terrible.
“If they could just learn to listen it could have saved a hell of a lot of stress.
“Is the review going to change that – I doubt it.”
As founder of M bovis Affected Farmers, Barr has been through the process and undertaken counselling to help deal with the scars of M bovis.
“I realised the challenge put on me; mentally it’s massive, everyone carries things in life, get a big one like this and it can be the straw that breaks you,” he said.
“My advice to farmers I support now is when you get a call from MPI you know your first job – your first job is to take control of the situation, set some ground rules to protect yourself, not to eradicate bovis.
“So, you ask, is eradication worth it in the end?
“The bigger question – is the cost of getting there, not just financially but, more importantly the human cost, people, society, social costs, worth getting rid of the disease at the cost of human lives?
“I don’t believe so.
