The Animal Health Board YouTube Channel is a great way to stay in touch with
the latest news from New Zealand and overseas. Click on the video boxes to take
a peek behind the scenes of the TBfree New Zealand programme, and find out how
we are helping to make TB history.
Find out what bovine TB is; how it is spread; how it is diagnosed;
how it is treated; how it can be prevented; and who is responsible for
bringing the disease under control.
Left unchecked, bovine TB could seriously damage New Zealand's reputation
for top-quality meat and dairy products and jeopardize access to high-value
export markets worth around $12 billion per year to the economy. In
this video, farmers, industry representatives and the Minister of Agriculture
talk about the impact the disease could have if it got out of control.
Bovine TB can have devastating emotional and financial impacts on
individual farmers and the rural communities in which they live. In
this chapter, New Zealand herd owners talk about their experiences with
TB and how it has affected the way they farm.
Possums are the main source of TB infection in our farmed cattle
and deer herds. Around 70 per cent of new herd infections in at-risk
areas can be traced to TB-infected wild animals. In this chapter New
Zealanders talk about why we need to control possums to stop the spread
of bovine TB.
In 1978, the New Zealand government virtually stopped funding the
control of the country's main source of bovine TB - the invasive Australian
possum. Over the next 15 years, the number of cattle and deer infected
with TB increased rapidly. Find out how the Animal Health Board was
established and why.
Although the Animal Health Board's objective is to control possums
and ferrets to stop disease spreading, its work also contributes significantly
to operations being carried out by the Department of Conservation and
other agencies to protect native plants and animals.
New Zealand farmers explain why biodegradable 1080 is such an important
tool in the battle against bovine tuberculosis. For more information
on how and why 1080 poison is used in New Zealand, visit www.1080facts.co.nz
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