New Zealand is TB free.

By all international standards, New Zealand is TB free and has been for many years. On the 25^th July the Advertising Standards Authority released their decision regarding an appeal on my original complaint to them (complaint 16/127 and appeal 16/009).

It was OSPRI’S claim that nearly half of all TB infections in cattle result from transmission by possum. As around 10 years of testing has showed TB was almost non-existent in possums and in fact , in many years, no TB at all had been found in Possum, so  I argued possum could not have been contributing to bovine TB in cattle. The case was not up held, but the decision was a majority one only and not robust, plus further evidence supporting the case had come to hand. On this basis an appeal was lodged and subsequently upheld. Possum are not vector in Bovine TB!

In the course of lodging an appeal a lot of new evidence was obtained from The Ministry of Primary Industries by MP Richard Prosser and his staff. Salient points are!

OSPRI – have established no validated path of transmission from possum to cattle.

-          Ospri claim, via the Minister Nathan Guy , that determining the source of infection and the pathway of exposure is “not considered an efficient use of time and resources”.

-          Ospri release deliberately TB infected possum into the wild. The 12 possum admitted to MP Trevor Mallard in the Rimutuka Forest Park turned out, on further inspection, to be 256 infected possum over 10 years.

The article goes on to quote Office of Internationale des Epi-zootes (OIE) also known as The World Organisation for Animal Health, citing tolerances and standards.

Mr Richard Prossers office established that NZ must be one of the worlds most TB free countries. By world standards, even possum are TB free.

As OSPRI are in effect in trade, their claims can be considered “false and misleading” under the Fair Trade act.

Up until this year OSPRI is getting $80 million a year to fight a non-existent TB. The whole pantomime of herd testing , of slaughtering thousands of false positive, of pest controls – is all just that – a Pantomine! The $80 million a year is made up from farmers levies, tax payer via MPI and ratepayers. Starting in 2016 the next four years funding cycle is $62.5 million a year.

OSPRI have known that by all international standards, New Zealand has been TB free. They have continued to keep this information to themselves while continuing to use millions of dollars a year to maintain their careers and benefits.

If you or I were doing this, I suspect the serious fraud office would of long since been involved.

Best Regards, Bill Benfield.

This article can be found in – Fishing & Outdoor – September issue, Letters to the editor.