New Zealand on verge of wiping out painful cattle disease

By NICK PERRY
Associated Press

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand is on the verge of eradicating a painful bacterial disease from its herd of 10 million cattle after a four-year campaign that has involved killing more than 175,000 cows and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor says 271 farms have been cleared of Mycoplasma bovis and only a single farm in the country still has the disease. New Zealand would be the first country that has managed to wipe it out completely. In an interview with The Associated Press, O’Connor said it had been a traumatic process for affected farmers. If an infection was found on a farm, even healthy cows were killed to ensure the disease was stamped out.