Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Andrew Hoggard: Biosecurity Minister on the trial of New Zealand's response to foot and mouth disease
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: The government's running a trial to see how ready we
- 0:02Speaker 1: would be your foot and mouth dise these hit our shores.
- 0:05Speaker 1: We pray it doesn't. An outbreak could cost the economy
- 0:08Speaker 1: more than fifteen billion bucks a year. Andrew Hoggart is
- 0:11Speaker 1: the Biosecurity Minister, joins us this morning. Minister, good morning,
- 0:15Speaker 1: good morning, A right. Tell us about the farm simulation
- 0:18Speaker 1: that's happening in Tardanaki on the thirteenth of May. What
- 0:20Speaker 1: does that involve?
- 0:22Speaker 2: So that involves people going to the farm and setting
- 0:26Speaker 2: up as they would if there was a quarantine and
- 0:28Speaker 2: going through the testing and all the sort of stuff
- 0:31Speaker 2: that have to do if they got a someone ring
- 0:34Speaker 2: up and said, hey, I've got a suspicious case here.
- 0:36Speaker 2: So that's what that sort of is involving. And I
- 0:40Speaker 2: guess just testing the knowledge or the response of the
- 0:44Speaker 2: team because you think you can write the stuff down
- 0:48Speaker 2: on paper and say, oh, yes, this is what we'll
- 0:49Speaker 2: do until you show up and practice find out that
- 0:53Speaker 2: Google Map sends you off down someone else's race or
- 0:56Speaker 2: something like that. Then you don't know the things that
- 0:58Speaker 2: could go wrong. So the whole life years what could
- 1:01Speaker 2: go wrong? What can we learn? So if it ever
- 1:03Speaker 2: does happen, like you said, Pratt, never does unless we've
- 1:07Speaker 2: got the response, the practice, do it right?
- 1:11Speaker 1: Why are we doing this now?
- 1:14Speaker 2: Well, good question. I would have many years ago. I
- 1:17Speaker 2: would have thought this is something we would have done
- 1:18Speaker 2: years and years and years ago. Basically, when I got in,
- 1:22Speaker 2: I found out who actually didn't have an operational agreement
- 1:25Speaker 2: with industry on readiness and response. So we've done that,
- 1:30Speaker 2: and now we're making sure that you know, we are
- 1:33Speaker 2: ready and they are doing these exercises, and that we
- 1:36Speaker 2: do have the knowledge and that everyone is capable of responding.
- 1:40Speaker 1: A couple of years ago, the Indonesians had an outbreak,
- 1:42Speaker 1: Does that make the risk of one here higher?
- 1:47Speaker 2: Not really. You know, we went up to a higher
- 1:50Speaker 2: state of readiness then, but you know we're already. You know,
- 1:55Speaker 2: the world's a very small place these days, with air
- 1:57Speaker 2: travel and all the connections we've gone, so there's plenty
- 2:02Speaker 2: of places in the world with fot and mouth that
- 2:03Speaker 2: we do get traffic from. It's just about making sure
- 2:06Speaker 2: that our border security has the appropriate response to travelers
- 2:11Speaker 2: from those countries.
- 2:12Speaker 1: Andrew, if there is an outbreak on farm, how big
- 2:15Speaker 1: does the quarantine need to be and what do we
- 2:17Speaker 1: stop exporting, what happens.
- 2:20Speaker 2: So I believe stretching my memory here, but I think
- 2:23Speaker 2: it's about sort of a twenty kilometer zone. I could
- 2:27Speaker 2: be corrected on that, but basically that's sort of the
- 2:29Speaker 2: quarantine area in terms of exports. You know, the likelihood
- 2:35Speaker 2: would be that on that immediate day there would be
- 2:39Speaker 2: a shutdown of the entire country. But if we look
- 2:41Speaker 2: at the recent outbreak in Germany, you know they managed
- 2:44Speaker 2: to contain it to that one farm and they were
- 2:48Speaker 2: able to start exporting from the rest of Germany pretty
- 2:52Speaker 2: quickly because Germany was able to give confidence that it
- 2:56Speaker 2: was contained. So you know, the historical assumption here in
- 2:59Speaker 2: New Zealand has been would shut the entire country down
- 3:02Speaker 2: until we got on top of this. But you know,
- 3:04Speaker 2: we're working with other countries to show them our systems
- 3:08Speaker 2: that we could say, hey, se Houth Island's good, you
- 3:11Speaker 2: can keep going from there or this part of the Candre.
- 3:13Speaker 2: It's just contained to hear and if they've got confidence
- 3:16Speaker 2: that it's just contained to one part, then we can
- 3:19Speaker 2: keep exporting from the rest of the country.
- 3:21Speaker 1: Sounds like a good idea to be doing a simulation.
- 3:23Speaker 1: Then Andrew Hoguard, buy Security, make's the Good to have
- 3:25Speaker 1: you on the program.
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