Comment: I’m not saying the Government’s got its priorities right or wrong. I’m perching like a disoriented brown skua on the fence on this one. All I’m saying is that the coalition parties’ priorities feel very … familiar.
A highly pathogenic virus spreads rapidly around the globe. Finally it hits New Zealand – one of the last countries in the OECD to suffer an incursion. Officials propose locking down homes and businesses to save lives. But Act’s deputy leader warns the stress of those looming lockdowns on business is unsustainable.
That was the advent of Covid-19, six years ago now.
Now, there’s a new viral strain, H5N1, that’s finally arrived on the shores of our remote island nation. This one poses little threat to human life – but it does pose an enormous threat to the survival of our endangered native birds, our seals and sea lions and dolphins, and to our farmed poultry.
The Department of Conservation has already embarked on a programme to vaccinate 300 breeding pairs of NZ’s most threatened bird species – kākāpō, takahē, tūturuatu shore plover, kakī black stilt and kākāriki karaka orange-fronted parakeet.
Act’s Andrew Hoggard is now Minister for Biosecurity. Media asked him, what’s the worst case scenario for both wildlife and poultry farms?
“Worst case would be you get a number of infections within some major production facilities, and so there would be a reduction in eggs and chicken meat,” he replied. “You know, that’s some of the cheapest forms of protein that New Zealanders have available, and that’s why we’ve been so adamant on working towards making sure we’ve got plans in place and working with the industry.”
Later, he acknowledged a similar risk to native birds – birds that are “important to us” – but indicated that harm would be less costly. “Eggs, poultry, they’re some of the most cheapest forms of protein that New Zealanders purchase,” he reiterated. “So we don’t want any supply disruptions there because people are already doing it tough with cost of living. We don’t want to make it worse.”
Right now, those two priorities – saving the lives of endangered wildlife, and saving the livelihoods of our poultry farmers – are aligned.
There’s a particularly well-aligned economic motivation to stop the virus’ spread to dairy cows (as has happened in the US) and potentially to humans.
According to a paper published this year in the scientific journal Nature: “The costs of containing the outbreak now are small when contrasted against the uncertain but potentially catastrophic health and economic costs of the emergence of an H5N1 variant that is transmissible between humans.”
What is more problematic is when, as happened with Covid, the priorities of saving lives and saving the economy are perceived to compete with each other.
Remember, New Zealand had the lowest Covid death rate in the entire OECD. And its economy was the first in the OECD to rebound to pre-Covid GDP levels. Labour was re-elected in 2020 with an unprecedented majority, on the strength of its management of the virus.
But the collapse of trust in the Labour Government could be traced from the protracted Auckland lockdown beginning in August 2021. By the end of October that year, Auckland business leaders had penned an open letter to the prime minister Jacinda Ardern, asking her to ease restrictions to save their businesses.
Auckland Unlimited chief executive Nick Hill reframed the concerns about public health – no longer about the impact of the virus on the community, but about the impact of the lockdown on business owners and their workers: “Every day there are stories of individuals who are facing these choices or who have gone under, and beyond that the impact on mental health is certainly reaching levels beyond where we were previously,” he said.
So, will the point come when our community perceives the need to protect our native wildlife as being outweighed by the need to save our primary industries?
That may depend, as it did with Covid, on the global response.
A report from the Beacon Biothreats Emergence, Analysis and Communications Network says more than 30 countries have reported H5N1 outbreaks in their farmed poultry or domestic flocks this season. As more and more countries suffer these outbreaks, both importers and exporters will look for workarounds.
Countries like China that have traditionally imposed the most robust controls on imported poultry are now among those to have suffered the most outbreaks in their poultry farms and factories. That means they will no longer be so minded to ban imports from other affected countries.
Instead of total country bans, producer nations like Brazil and Canada are now compartmentalising their industries; World Organisation for Animal Health guidelines say their trading partners may only place restrictions on specific affected regions, or a designated 10km buffer zone around an infected farm.
At the same time, some nations are allowing imports of eggs and poultry meat products if they have been subjected to heat treatments that kill the virus.
The net effect of these changes is that the spread of H5N1 is becoming normalised in international trade – and, as with Covid, it will become increasingly expensive and impractical to eliminate. New Zealand will inevitably move to a suppression strategy, rather than elimination, to allow some producers to keep exporting even as others manage outbreaks.
Already, the Ministry for Primary Industries has signalled that the virus will have to be managed, not eliminated. “If it becomes widespread in the wild bird population, we won’t be able to eradicate it from wild birds or prevent them from continuing to spread the virus,” says Dr Mary van Andel, the ministry’s chief veterinary officer.
The Department of Conservation accepts that, too. It has plans to mitigate risks to threatened species and public conservation land, including actions to enhance detection, reduce spread and protect threatened species, says its senior science adviser Dr Kate McInnes.
“Our focus is to minimise spread on public conservation land through strong biosecurity practices, not disturbing wildlife, and supporting the health and resilience of threatened bird populations through conservation work such as breeding and predator control programmes,” she says.
Ultimately, that’s bad news for our wildlife. Farmed chickens can be locked in sealed sheds, but it’s not possible to lock down our native birds, seals and dolphins.
The only thing that can guarantee the safety of our endangered wildlife is eliminating H5N1 – but the time will quickly come when our $2 billion egg and poultry industry demands greater flexibility to manage the virus.
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