The ‘consumer’ is both the carrot and stick of our industry. He/she is the elusive arbiter of what we produce and whether it is acceptable: ultimately, whether we all stay in business.
The consumer dictates that they don’t like some things we do; would prefer us to do certain things better; and wholeheartedly approve of some other things. We would be wise to hear the messages they send us.
However, the consumer struggles to send us a clear, consistent message with perhaps one exception: they are very focused on animal welfare in terms of animal health and disease. This is the one thing that New Zealand probably does very well and yet it is the one area where our industry has failed us miserably.
As a reasonably experienced dairy vet arriving here from the UK over 10 years ago, I had never ever heard of inductions. I find it hard to believe that if they had never appeared on my horizon as a dairy vet that they would be high on the list of a supermarket shopper’s concerns in a high street in Birmingham. And yet, our industry has let inductions become the focal point for almost any discussion of our dairy farming system.
Of course, inductions and tail docking are not good, and of course the steps we’ve made to remove them are excellent. But why don’t we focus on the positives? Why don’t we make as much noise as possible about our relatively low incidence of mastitis compared to other countries; our ridiculously low incidence of calving problems; our virtual absence of ‘production diseases’ such as displaced abomasums, ketosis, liver abscesses; our total absence of hock lesions caused by concrete floors (in Holland having ‘only’ 20% of cows with hock lesions is considered fantastic); our overall low incidence of lameness; our very low –and largely very responsible- use of antibiotics; our significantly low rate of pneumonia amongst calves; the freedom of expression our cows enjoy by being outside most of their lives?
The reason we don’t trumpet these powerful arguments about the positive health and welfare of our dairy cows compared to our competitors overseas is that we haven’t got a clue whether this is all true. As a practicing vet who has worked here and in Europe, I’m pretty sure it’s all true and all positive for NZ. The problem is nobody seems to want to find out. There is a morbid fear of disease recording and record keeping in NZ farming and it’s preventing us from making what may turn out to be the most significant impact over our competitors overseas.
Using the disease listed above, I would be very surprised if NZ didn’t score best in almost all categories when compared to any other developed nation, and quite a few developing ones too. So why the fear of finding out? So much to gain in a world where animal welfare and health is becoming the number one priority for that elusive consumer.
At the recent Dairy Vets Conference in Napier it was heartening to hear Charlie Pedersen endorse the view that a robust system of collecting disease information would be hugely beneficial for dairy farmers. We need to know this stuff and begin to start setting the agenda again. We need to be talking about the positives of our system. New Zealand dairy farmers need to shake off their concerns about ‘more bloody paperwork’ and look at the bigger picture. Any Scandinavian country can tell you how many cases of mastitis occur in any region on any weekday, and even give you the cow identities. We struggle to even put a figure on a national average over a year. What hope have we got of convincing a skeptical consumer that our cows are healthier?
We need people with vision to run with this ball. A simple herd health and welfare assurance type scheme could be the best marketing strategy the industry ever adopted, as well as being the most economical. Federated Farmers have looked at this before and Charlie Pedersen has shown they are now prepared to grasp this concept and make it fly. With leaders like this in the industry we now have a real chance to forge a critical identity globally. We must start setting the agenda.
