WELLINGTON, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand's Ministry for Primary Industries' testing program has identified one new property as positive for the bacterial cattle disease Mycoplasma bovis, the ministry said in a statement Monday.
The statement said the newly identified property is Van Leeuwen Dairy Group farm which was already under a Restricted Place notice under the Biosecurity Act.
"We've said all along that we fully expected the possibility for further farms within this enterprise testing positive. The nature of this disease is that it spreads between animals that are in close, repeated and prolonged contact," said Response Incident Controller Stephen Bell.
"The disease doesn't always present symptoms and often doesn't show up through just one test. This is why we developed a testing protocol which tests herds up to three times at three-to-four-week intervals," Bell said, adding that testing like this over two to three months "gives us the confidence we need that we have definite results for each farm."
The testing program for Mycoplasma bovis have been focused on the infected properties, stock movement traces from and to those properties, and the neighboring properties, Bell said, adding that "no adjacent properties have, as yet, been identified as infected."
"We're not just relying on these tests though, we've been taking a multi-layer approach to testing to find out how widespread Mycoplasma bovis is," he said, adding that results suggest that the surveillance plan is working and this disease is not spreading in the local area around the infected farms and is not widespread across the country.
"We are carrying out all our work with urgency to limit the impact on the farming community as much as possible," Bell said, adding that all farmers and rural contractors should help protect their farms and businesses by following standard on-farm hygiene best practice.
