Five Star Beef notified of 44 suspected cases of Mycoplasma bovis on feedlot

Thursday, 23 August 2018

New Zealand's most intense feedlot operator served notice it has M. bovis.

The countries biggest intensive beef farming operation has been served notice by the Ministry of Primary Industries that 44 of its 16,000 cattle could have Mycoplasma bovis.

Canterbury's Five Star Beef, owned by Anzco, made headlines this week after animal welfare group Safe's drone footage revealed the scale of its South Island feedlot.

The Ashburton feedlot, which primarily supplies beef to the Japanese market and locally under the brand Wakanui Beef, is the largest in the country.

The Five Star Beef feedlot has been issued a notice that 44 of its cattle could have Mycoplasma bovis.

It currently houses 16,000 cattle, but has resource consent for up to 19,000 cattle to live within its pens, where they live for two-to-eight months before being sent to slaughter.

Anzco general manager of agriculture and livestock Grant Bunting says the cows spend about two to eight months on the feedlot before being sent to slaughter.

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A restricted notice on the roadside of a Mycoplasma bovis infected farm.

The Five Star Beef feedlot has been operating for 27 years and is majority owned by Japanese company, Anzco.

Anzco is the primary supplier of grass-fed angus beef to McDonalds restaurants in New Zealand, which is not sourced from the feedlot.

Five Star Beef feedlot is currently home to 16,000 cattle.

Anzco general manager of agriculture and livestock Grant Bunting said the affected cattle have been quarantined.

Five Star Beef is one of a number of farms with cattle that have tested positive for Mycoplasma bovis since July 2017.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern met with representatives of the dairy farming community in the Waikato, after the region was found to have a confirmed case of Mycoplasma bovis.

M. bovis was detected for the first time in New Zealand in July last year. In a phased eradication costing $886 million, the Government has ordered the cull of about 150,000 cattle in an attempt to rid the country of the bacterial disease which can cause untreatable mastitis, abortion and arthritis in cattle.

The disease is harmless to humans and is not transmitted through meat or milk.

Five Star Beef chief executive Peter Conley said the company was working closely with the ministry to manage the impact of M. bovis on the property.

Five Star Beef feedlot has resource consent to house 19,000 steers at a time.

'The cattle are suspected to have been infected before they arrived at Five Star Beef and quarantine protocols were implemented immediately.'

Bunting said the notice 'won't affect us at all because essentially all our cattle leave the property for slaughter anyway'.

The feedlot typically carries about 14,000 cattle at a time, Bunting said.

He estimated about 98 per cent of the beef was exported.

Bunting said the lack of shelter on the feedlot, which Safe claimed was a violation of under the Animal Welfare Act, was no worse than 'thousands of hectares' of beef farms across the country.

He said he didn't see a welfare issue, because cattle on the site had 'never experienced a stress event related to climate' in the 27 years the feedlot has been operating.

Safe's head of campaigns Marianne Macdonald said feedlots raised serious animal welfare and environmental concerns.

'For months the cattle are denied their natural instinct to graze, which they would normally do for up to eight hours a day.'

'They are forced onto a diet of grain, which can cause bloating and diarrhoea,' she said.

Macdonald said the the feedlot was part the of increasing 'Americanisation of the New Zealand farming landscape'.

She called on Environment Minister David Parker to bring an end to the practice.

Parker told RNZ he had seen a number of problematic, and environmentally unsound, feedlots in the Hawkes Bay region, and said regional councils were lax on enforcement.

But Bunting said commercial feedlots would not become 'mainstream' in New Zealand in the near future.

'It's feasability isn't high in New Zealand, the thing that makes it popular overseas is that there's cheap feed available.'

'The climate here doesn't lend itself naturally to the production of feed, so most farmers find it prudent to consolidate their stock in the winter time,' he said.

There was nothing stopping more farmers from scaling up their operations to be more intensive, and in those cases farms were less exposed to 'the rigorous welfare and compliance scrutiny that our farm is'.