MAF, Farmers and Biosecurity

Speech Notes
Murray Sherwin, Director General MAF

Federated Farmers National Council
19 November 2002

Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen

Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. Federated Farmers represents a very important stakeholder group for MAF, and I greatly value the quality of the relationship that we have with your organisation and with your leadership.

Our paths intersect on many occasions, and in many different forums. Mostly, we're on the same side of the issues of the day, and I know my staff really appreciates the insights and analysis that you and your teams are able to bring to those issues and the support that your teams offer my groups in so many ways.

Sometimes, we find ourselves on opposite sides of an issue, or with different perspectives. What is really important on those occasions is the openness and quality of the dialogue, the openness of minds that goes with that quality of dialogue, and the sincerity and integrity with which those differing views are held. There is a real maturity about our institutional relationship that we at MAF particularly value.

I should make particular reference to issues we have been working on over the past year for which the Federated Farmers' input has been especially valuable - trade negotiations and animal welfare.

On the trade policy front, I have no doubt that this is amongst the most important work that we do, in support of our close colleagues at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. We often find ourselves working alongside your senior leadership in strange parts of the world where trade negotiations are taking place. I am acutely conscious of, and very grateful for, the very strong support we have received from your leadership in the resourcing of our trade policy/trade negotiations work.

Likewise, on animal welfare, we find ourselves working jointly in dreadfully distressing circumstances where farm animals have been maltreated and intervention is required. This is invariably very stressful work for my team, and having Federated Farmers alongside us as we perform our duties is a huge benefit. Indeed, I doubt that we could do this task without your assistance and support.

MAF and biosecurity

I would like to use the time available to me today to talk about our biosecurity capability in fairly general terms, but also to speak more specifically about the response capability we have for foot and mouth disease (FMD), how we think about these matters, what an outbreak of FMD would look like for farmers, and to use this speech as a further step in consciousness raising about the risks posed by a disease like FMD.

It is entirely predictable that New Zealand would be more focused on biosecurity matters than other countries. We have, relatively, much more at stake than others because more, than any other country that I have been able to identify, our economic welfare is dependent on the production and exports of the agricultural sectors.

A quick read of the history of MAF illustrates vividly that biosecurity was one of the very early government interventions in the emerging colony of New Zealand. As far back as 1849, The Sheep Ordinance was promulgated, aimed at eliminating the scab mite then infesting sheep. Restrictions on the importation of cattle were introduced in the 1861 Diseased Cattle Act.

Through the latter half of the 19th Century, New Zealand saw the introduction of a huge range of new plants and animals. With them came new pests and diseases, and a search for collective measures to deal with those pests and diseases. Codling moth, small birds, leaf-roller caterpillars and, by the 1870's, a significant rabbit problem, all pointed to the vulnerability of the colony to imported pests and diseases. The formation of the Ministry of Agriculture in 1892 flowed directly from recognition of the significance of work in the animal and plant health field, and the more general pest and disease control concerns that we now label "biosecurity".

Why the history lesson? I wanted to make four main points:

Biosecurity is core MAF business, and has been for a long time.
The origins of biosecurity lie directly with concerns about animal and plant health.
New Zealand is especially vulnerable to biosecurity risks - risks that have been long recognised.
Biosecurity and international trade, both inwards and outwards, are inextricably linked.

Biosecurity under review

We have at the moment a flurry of reports and reviews of New Zealand's biosecurity capability. We also have currently running some high profile activities, such as the painted apple moth campaign and the psittacine or parrot pox episode in Auckland, that highlight how controversial and challenging biosecurity issues can be. I suspect that they also highlight a widening gap between urban and rural attitudes to biosecurity issues.

In particular, there are differing priorities for biosecurity effort. The more traditional rural concerns with pests and diseases that impact on agricultural, horticultural or forestry production and international market access, have over recent years been matched with a growing demand for biosecurity efforts to similarly target human health concerns (e.g., southern saltmarsh mosquito), environmental and biodiversity concerns (e.g., psittacine or parrot pox, painted apple moth), and threats to the marine environment (e.g. undaria)

All of this adds up to a rapidly widening scope for biosecurity activities and rapidly escalating public and political expectations about what our biosecurity teams should be achieving. Add to this a sharp increase in the complexity of biosecurity task - a function of more sophisticated science, better detection methods, and diversity of risks and risk pathways associated with increased and more diversified trade and tourism activity - and you can see that our biosecurity teams are under some stress.

We have before us at this point three major reviews of biosecurity. The most significant of these is the Biosecurity Strategy review commissioned by the Biosecurity Council. That has still to go through a second round of consultation, and is due for completion by mid 2003. This is intended to be an overarching strategic review dealing with goals and objectives, leadership and governance, capability and funding. This will be an important document. Federated Farmers has a close interest in the contents of this review and recommendations flowing from it. You have already been closely engaged in its development to date, and I'm sure we can expect to see you fully engaged in the next stages as the document is finalised.

We also have a review of biosecurity risk undertaken by the Office of the Auditor General, and a review of biosecurity surveillance activity commissioned by MAF as an input to the strategy review process.

At last count, these three reviews contained a total of around 170 recommendations on how we might do biosecurity differently, and hopefully better. We will be heavily engaged through the course of 2003 assessing these recommendations and implementing the decisions that flow from them.

I mentioned that the scope of our biosecurity effort is broadening rapidly as concerns with environmental, health and marine pests and diseases mount alongside the more traditional agriculture, horticulture and forestry pests and diseases. That trend towards a wider span of interest for biosecurity is well established, and it makes good sense, as well as meeting important community interests, that we respond to that wider scope by expanding our biosecurity capability.

FMD: The impacts

While biosecurity is under pressure to take on new and different risks, we must not lose sight of some of our traditional concerns. The UK experience of 2001 was a timely reminder of just how devastating one of those traditional concerns - FMD - can be. It is important that we learn all the lessons we can from the UK experience.

To better understand what an FMD outbreak might mean for New Zealand, we have collaborated with our colleagues at the Reserve Bank and the Treasury to make use of their economic modelling capability. Into those models, we can inject some fairly crude estimates of the impact on export values, and trace through the impacts on a broader range of macro-economic variables. The results do not make attractive reading.

The starting point for our assessment is to recognise that all meat, animal by-products, wool and dairy products exported from New Zealand carry a MAF/NZFSA certificate that, amongst other things, assures the importing country that New Zealand is FMD free. With confirmation of a single FMD case in New Zealand, those certificates become invalid, and export of those products into our key markets ceases. We would, of course, be working very hard with our colleagues in NZFSA and MFAT to re-establish trade certification as quickly as possible, including efforts to have, for example, the South Island accepted as FMD free if the outbreak occurred in the North Island, and vice versa.

We would also be working very hard to retain access for products like wool (especially scoured product) and dairy products (e.g., milk powders and other heat processed products with no risk of carrying FMD). But for our key markets, the standard rule is that FMD freedom is not accepted until three months have elapsed since the last identified case of FMD. And few countries have incentives to treat us generously in this exercise. In short, something like 2/3rds of our export trade would be at risk for at least 4 to 5 months, and possibly longer.

Having plugged that sort of scenario into the economic models, it is not difficult to generate impacts that cumulate to a reduction in GDP of around 8 percent after 2 years. Moreover, the government's net debt to GDP ratio by 2009/2010 jumps from around 12 percent projected in the absence of FMD to around 25 percent after FMD - a product of lower government revenue, increased expenditure and the drop in GDP. In effect, this reverses the past 15 years of progress towards a lower government net debt ratio. There are significant impacts on unemployment, and we could expect very significant impacts on the financial health of some of our companies and communities, as well as directly on the income of farmers.

Note that the scenario that generates these results is generally regarded as being at the optimistic end of the spectrum in terms of the speed with which the outbreak in contained, and the speed with which market access is regained for our farm products.

Even so, it generates what, by any standards, is a profound economic shock for the nation. It is certainly enough to demand the attention of policy makers in many government agencies as we think about both the implications for wider economic management, for biosecurity capability, and for the response measures that must be in place.

If there is one message that emerges from the UK experience of last year, it is that prompt action makes a very big difference to the ultimate impact of the disease. From the date of first diagnosis in the UK, 3 days elapsed before the authorities imposed a ban on all livestock movements. Subsequent reviews suggest that, had they imposed an immediate halt to all movements of livestock, the number of animals finally slaughtered may have been reduced by between 35 and 50 percent.

We have taken that message on board, and should an outbreak occur in New Zealand, expect to see an instant nationwide ban on all livestock movements.

FMD: The response capability

So what would an FMD alert look like in New Zealand? What should you, as farmers, expect to see from MAF, and what would we be expecting from you?

Let me talk through a hypothetical example.

It starts with a farmer, almost certainly a member of Federated Farmers, of course, milking his cows one morning. He notices several cows with very little milk, salivating and reluctant to move. There are also some visible lesions and blisters. Unsure of what is causing these symptoms, he calls his vet. The vet arrives around noon, inspects the cows, and concludes that, on the basis of her clinical examination, she cannot exclude the possibility of FMD. 5

Like most NZ large animal vets, she has had training in what to look for with FMD, and that training has been reinforced over the years by articles in the New Zealand Veterinary Journal, in Surveillance, the MAF Journal, and in the periodic direct mail outs from MAF. Like many of her professional colleagues, she may also have participated in MAF exotic disease courses over the years. If we are particularly lucky, she may be one of the 100 or so vets that MAF sent to the UK to assist in their FMD outbreak in 2001.

The vet knows to call the MAF Exotic Disease Response Centre, part of the National Centre for Disease Investigation (NCDI) at Wallaceville, Upper Hutt using the well-publicised 0800 number. On making that call, she is connected with an expert veterinarian who talks her through the symptoms she has seen in the animals. If that conversation does not allow the possibility of FMD to be excluded, the machinery begins to stir. The original vet will be requested to stay on the property, to organise mustering of other stock on the property for examination, ensure no stock leaves the property, and to begin documentation of all movements of animals and animal products on and off the property over the previous fortnight.

An Investigating Veterinarian, one of 100 around the country with specialist training, will be dispatched to the property. Our contractual arrangements require that one of these Investigating Veterinarians can be present on any property in New Zealand within a maximum of 6 hours from being called.

On arrival, the Investigating Veterinarian conducts a second examination of the animals.

If FMD still cannot be excluded, our response machine goes into hyperdrive.

At that point, several actions are triggered:

An NCDI specialist is dispatched to the property, by helicopter if necessary.
All properties within 3 kilometres of the original site are sealed and inspections initiated on all livestock within that zone.
Preparations commence for the slaughter of livestock on the original property.
A nationwide livestock standstill is declared.
A "whole of government" crisis management structure is activated.
A process commences to trace movements of all livestock and risk goods over the previous couple of weeks from the infected property.
Investigative teams begin assessing transmission risks, including gathering information from NIWA and elsewhere to enable meteorological modelling of potential wind-borne virus and to assist in the delimitation process.
Samples are dispatched to the containment lab at NCDI where basic tests will be conducted to determine whether or not we are dealing with FMD.
As soon as possible, virus samples will be dispatched to Pirbright, in the UK, where the virus can be typed and our arrangements with the International Vaccine Bank activated.

Within 48 hours of samples arriving at Wallaceville, we will know whether or not we are dealing with FMD. If it is FMD, we will still not know which strain of the virus is here and which vaccine would be necessary should we wish to use it. Hence the use of Pirbright. But even with the arrangements we have with the International Vaccine Bank - a joint arrangement with the UK, Australia, Ireland, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Malta - it could take at least 4 to 5 weeks to get vaccines produced and back to New Zealand.

Given the lags involved in identifying the strain and producing the appropriate vaccine, we would order the production of the vaccine on an asap basis, and make a decision later about whether, when or how it might be used. Key judgements in that decision would relate to the effectiveness of our slaughter procedures and progress in containing the outbreak. At present, all animals vaccinated would have to be tagged and subsequently slaughtered due to the inability to otherwise distinguish between vaccinated and infected animals. But even then, vaccination might assist to contain the spread of the disease and reduce its ultimate costs. We have some reasons to believe that within about five years, new vaccines and new tests might enable us to retain vaccinated animals within the national herd/flock for the remainder of their productive lives.

Resource availability

None of these response activities happens without a considerable amount of planning, management and foresight. And none of it happens without people on the ground - preferably people with the right skills, the right training and the right experience.

MAF does not carry such a "peace time army". Instead, we have arrangements in place (and are developing more) that allow us to call on a substantial pool of veterinarians and other skilled personnel. We have a standing contact with AgriQuality Ltd that gives us access to 100 patrol vets. The MAF Verification Agency has around 130 vets, mostly engaged in freezing works up and down the country. With a nation wide livestock stand still, at least for the first couple of weeks of any outbreak, we would expect to call on those to assist. Massey University will make available its entire veterinary staff (around 30) and its final year veterinary students (around 75). Under the Biosecurity Act, we have the power to call up every registered vet in NZ to assist should that be deemed necessary. And importantly, there is an international veterinary reserve agreement that could be triggered, bringing at least 100 vets from Australia, the US, Canada, UK and Ireland. (The US provided around 300 vets to the UK under this arrangement).

Vets are an essential part of the response capability, but a great deal of other manpower would also be required. It is important to use the vets for the essential functions of patrolling for disease diagnosis. The process of animal slaughter, disposal, cleaning and disinfection is best done by others, under appropriate supervision. Here, contractual arrangements with AgriQuality, and the "whole of government" crisis co-ordination machinery becomes important, with the latter giving us access to Defence and Civil Defence mechanisms to assist with such work. We have arrangements under discussion with Wrightsons which would give us access to some of their people with useful non-veterinary skills. If necessary, we would also call on meat company staff to assist with slaughter and disposal processes. 7

Finally, but very importantly, we have in place a memorandum of understanding with the New Zealand Police that would enable us to call on their services to enforce and administer the livestock standstill process. And, as mentioned, we would quickly kick into action the government's central emergency management processes, operating out of the Beehive Emergency Operations Centre. This would be used to co-ordinate the government response, including military or other involvement, and ensure that all arms of the government response were integrated and communicating effectively.

Organizational structure

The organizational structure of the response process is well established and most of it well practiced. Centred at or near the outbreak is a Field Operations Response Team (FORT) for which AgriQuality is the lead supplier of services. This group handles the field operations, including:

Disease investigation, slaughter and disposal operation, cleaning and disinfection.
Liaison and co-ordination with local support agencies (Police, Regional Emergency Management Groups, Defence forces, Local Government).
Co-ordination of local media activity (e.g., field footage for TV etc)

The FORT operation is linked to the Exotic Disease Response Centre (EDRC) at Wallaceville. This is the specialist MAF National Centre for Disease Investigation. Its role is to provide:

Day to day technical management - directing disease investigation, tracing and movement control.
Reporting and analysis of response information, including predictive modelling and mapping.
Reference diagnostic lab support via the NZ Animal Health Reference Laboratory.
Technical liaison with industry experts.
Co-ordination of processing industries

In turn, the EDRC group reports to the National Co-ordination Centre (NCC), also run by MAF and based either at MAF headquarters or in the Beehive Emergency Operations Centre. The function of the NCC is to:

Determine technical policies.
Ensure that decisions taken accord with the statutory authority provided by the Biosecurity Act.
Co-ordination across all government groups - both central and local.
Via the New Zealand Food Safety Authority and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, to co-ordinate the process of notifying our international trade partners of the outbreak, and negotiate conditions of access for New Zealand product.
Manage media communications.
Manage stakeholder liaison and communication.
Manage compensation processes.

At the top of this structure comes the Prime Minister, the Minister of Agriculture and Biosecurity and other ministers whose engagement, and that of their senior officials, is co-ordinated through a committee on Domestic and External Security Co-ordination (DESC and ODESC for the corresponding officials committee)

At this level, we would be looking for advice and endorsement of policies being pursued, and importantly, provision of:

Financial support.
Inter-departmental co-ordination in support of MAF's lead agency role.
Co-ordination of media communications, in concert with those coming from the field.
Promulgation of Biosecurity Emergency Regulations in the event that a Biosecurity Emergency is declared.
Determination of broader economic and social policy responses.

These structures may seem complicated. But the impact of an event such as an FMD outbreak is profound, and it is important to ensure that information flows readily, that decisions and the reasons for them are understood across the entire system and that communication out to farmers, the public and our trading partners is prompt, accurate and reliable.

Communications

A key lesson from the UK and elsewhere is that effective communication is at least half of the battle in successfully managing an outbreak. But the magnitude of the communications challenge should not be under-estimated. On experience elsewhere, we should expect that it would take 1 to 2 weeks before we had a good picture of the likely extent and nature of the outbreak, and up to 4 to 5 weeks before it peaks. During that period, information emerging may be inconsistent or contradictory, and we could expect to see conflicting media stories being played out. Of course, in best New Zealand fashion, we should also expect an immediate rush to apportion blame liberally.

A real challenge is to ensure that we have an early flow of good quality and consistent information from all parties - from field officers through to the Prime Minister, from farmers to diplomats. As our simulations exercises have shown, there is immediate pressure on those running the emergency response to simultaneously engage in provision of information upwards through the organization structure, and outwards via the media. We are also conscious that we have work to do to ensure our communication networks to stakeholder groups, such as Federated Farmers, are well set up and effective.

Compensation

At an early stage, we would be activating mechanisms to provide compensation payments to those caught up in the outbreak. Under the Biosecurity Act, the Crown would compensate those who suffered loss as a consequence of the exercise of powers under that Act. The general principle is that after compensation, those affected should be no better, and no worse, off than those unaffected by the exercise of powers. That, I suspect, is easier said than implemented. 9

It is important that compensation arrangements support effective management of any outbreak - we cannot afford to either under-compensate, and thereby encourage under-reporting of suspicious signs of disease, or over-compensate, and thereby encourage, as seemed to occur in the UK, additional infection of animals in order to claim the benefit of compensation. However challenging the task, we would wish to get mechanisms established quickly to sort out claims and get payments flowing promptly.

Trade Access

In dealing with an event as enormous as this, there are many pressure points. One obvious point of pressure is our international trade negotiations capacity. Renegotiating conditions of access to foreign markets for our products takes on huge significance in the damage limitation and recovery phase. That capacity would be drawn primarily from MFAT, NZFSA, and the MAF Biosecurity and Policy teams.

Farmer and community support

Likewise, there would be an immediate need for support mechanisms in rural areas - to support farmers, their families and local communities hit by an outbreak. MAF has very little capacity in this area, and we would be looking to other government agencies, and to groups such as Federated Farmers, to assist in putting those sorts of mechanisms together.

Indeed, farmers have a number of key roles to play. They are our primary surveillance mechanism - the ones who are most likely to spot suspicious signs first. It is important that farmers have some awareness of what to look for and what to do it they are suspicious. MAF will be producing some brochures to assist on that front shortly. Farmers will, inevitably, form a large part of the support network for their colleagues, and direct support for the teams in the field. We need to treat the preparations for these sorts of events as a partnership with shared interests in prevention, surveillance and prompt eradication.

Concluding comments

My reason for choosing to do this presentation today is that we have become aware that farmers generally do not feel that they understand how one of these biosecurity emergencies would work, or what would be expected of them. This is one early step to raise awareness and lift our standards of readiness.

You may have noticed that last week our MAF team ran an exercise in which the response to an outbreak of anthrax was simulated. The exercise was a substantial one, involving 92 people at the FORT and EDRC level, including observers from 4 countries and engagement of most of the response agencies at the ODESC level. This exercise was designed to test our response capability, to uncover weaknesses, and generally to familiarize the teams with structures, procedures and the sorts of pressures associated with the real thing.

We run an exercise of this sort each year. Moreover, we get to participate in similar exercises abroad, such as the major Australian FMD simulation which took place in September. Occasionally, our people get to experience the real thing, through participation in events such as the UK FMD outbreak. In these ways, we try to prepare ourselves and refine our response planning.

We can never say that FMD will not find its way to NZ. Our biosecurity controls are the envy of the world, but we cannot provide a hermetically sealed border. Last year, at New Zealand's international airports, quarantine officers removed the following from incoming passengers:

8.0 tonnes of meat products
15.9 tonnes of fruit
3.6 tonnes of seeds
3.2 tonnes of dairy products
3.2 tonnes of fish products
5800 plant items

Using audit techniques, our biometricians estimate that we capture about 96% of the potential fruit fly host material carried by incoming passengers, and around 91% of the FMD risk material. To repeat, our border controls are good, but not absolute.

If we were to suffer an outbreak of FMD, the consequences would be severe. That deserves the attention of all of us. MAF aims to offer protection second to none - and response capability second to none should the protection be breached. We need your support to do so.

Contact for Enquiries

Director-General
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
PO Box 2526
Wellington

Tel: +64 4 894 0100
Fax: +64 4 894 0720
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