FARMERS IMAGE -
Farmers have been told they need to work to restore
their public image. Government backbencher, and former Associate
Agriculture Minister, Denis Marshall, believes the image of farmers has been
tarnished in the wake of the illegal release of RCD. He says he thinks the
risks of having RCD are minimal and probably less damaging to New
Zealand's clean green image than 1080 poison. But Mr Marshall feels farmers
responded too enthusiastically when the details of the illegal release came to
light and that rubbed off in the media in a negative way.
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MAF DEFENDS - MAF (Ministry of Agriculture - NZ) is defending itself from
critics who say the illegal
introduction of RCD caught it unprepared. Federated Farmers' president,
Malcolm Bailey, says there's a widespread view that MAF did not have an
effective strategy in place for the disease's inevitable arrival. MAF's
communications manager, Debbie Gee, points out that it DID have a
contingency plan to contain the disease if it arrived here illegally. But she
says farmers themselves stymied it by actively spreading the virus for weeks
before MAF learned the disease was here. Debbie Gee says that ensured
MAF had no chance of containing the virus.