Farmers Are Being Encouraged To Have Their Say On A Proposal To Move The M Bovis Eradication Programme To A New Phase A National Pest Management Plan

Farmers are being encouraged to have their say on a proposal to move the M bovis eradication programme to a new phase a National Pest Management Plan. The M. bovis governance group independent chairman Kelvan Smith says NZ is at the tail end of the outbreak, now building evidence that M. bovis is not present, rather than tracing risk events associated with active infection in our national herd. OSPRI has been nominated as the management agency in the National Pest Management Plan proposal. Running the M. bovis programme alongside the NAIT and the TBFree Programmes, has potential for up to $15m in savings across the three programmes. Kelvan Smith says farmers have been significantly affected by M. bovis, but had also played an important role in the programme’s progress.