Tagging of livestock should be the job of farmers, not truck drivers, the Road Transport Forum (RTF) says.
This was the message RTF chief executive Nick Leggett gave to the Primary Production Select Committee at Parliament on September 12.
He was speaking against aspects of a new amendment bill which strengthens the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) legislation.
The RTF provides services to the National Livestock Transport and Safety Group which represents around 95% of the commercial livestock transport industry with around 280 companies operating 2,600 livestock vehicles.
“The road freight transport industry is 100 percent behind protecting New Zealand’s biosecurity and can often be relied upon to detect any unwanted pest visitors,” Leggett says.
“But what truck drivers are being asked to do in the new bill … is well beyond their mandate as livestock transporters.
“It is proposed that truck drivers will be severely penalised with fines if they transport animals that do not have NAIT tags. Yet truck drivers have no control over the NAIT tagging system, as getting those animals tagged is solely the responsibility of the farmers that raise them.
“We accept that animals must be traced to ensure their lifetime movements can be monitored in the event of any disease outbreaks. But there have been long-standing problems with the NAIT system that cannot be fixed by punishing the people who drive trucks,” he says.
“Livestock transporters are prepared to help improve the NAIT system and in fact, have been involved in a range of actions to positively change behaviour in the farming community, around animal welfare and safe travel for stock.
“They are just not prepared to shoulder this blame and cost when clearly the person in control of the animals – the person sending them on the transport and the person receiving them at the other end – have primary responsibilities.
“This is especially so, given the legislation changes mean that livestock transporters would be issued $400 fines for transporting untagged animals, when clearly, no untagged livestock should ever be presented for transport if the NAIT system was working properly.
“We want livestock transporters removed from the penalty schedule in this bill.
“In addition to it not being the responsibility of the person transporting the animals from A to B, there are a number of logistical practicalities. Visually checking for tags on livestock is an impossibility given it is sometimes dark when animals are loaded, the number of animals and the speed with which they are loaded, and the method used to load and unload.
“There is also an imbalance of power in the relationship. The farmer, or person who has arranged the movement of the livestock is a customer and can put the ‘customer is always right’ pressure on the truck driver who is likely to be an employee of a company, rather than an owner,” Leggett says.
The RTF has spoken to primary industries minister Damien O’Connor about the issue and carried out meetings with livestock transporters around New Zealand.
*The RTF’s submission on the bill can be found here.
