The big Biblical bailout of Egypt

With all the economic problems around the world today, and governments everywhere printing money to bail out (ie buy up) banks and other companies, it is easy to forget that this has a very strong precedent in the Bible.

Consider the account of Joseph, who was at the time Prime Minister (or equivalent) of Egypt (the Pharaoh’s second in command). Joseph knew through a prophetic dream that there would be seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine. He collected grain during the seven years of plenty and stored it (Genesis 41:37-49). When the years of famine came, he opened the storehouses to feed the people (Genesis 41:53-57).

But note that he didn’t just give the food away – he sold it. (Genesis 47:13-26) In fact, “Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, in exchange for the grain that they bought.” (v14). Once the people had no money left, Joseph bought their livestock (v17), their land (v20), and the people themselves (v21).

Joseph bailed out the entire land of Egypt from their crisis, nationalising the entire agricultural industry – as Pharaoh owned the land, the livestock, and even the people.

Having nationalised the industry, he imposed a 20% tax on all produce (v23-26), which was Pharaoh’s return on his investment.

Isn’t the similarity to today incredible? But there is one big difference:

Joseph bought everything using real assets (grain) that he had saved.

Today, governments may try to buy out industry. But they are doing so using money they have fabricated from thin air, or borrowed, or taken from taxpayers.

What Joseph did was legitimate trading of real, saved assets, not the juggling of funny money. Furthermore he saved many people from starving to death.

But governments today may, just to save people from dropping their living standards a bit, use funny money to achieve exactly what he did – state control of industry. While being encouraged by most people. It is worrying that so many people are so keen to sacrifice their freedom for temporary financial gain.

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

Irish farmers want more subsidies

I am disappointed to hear that the Irish Farmers Association is calling for more subsidies – and ridiculous ones at that. The value of the pound has dropped, so as Irish farmers export a large amount of their produce to the UK, the price Irish farmers receive has dropped as well. Now the IFA is calling for Irish taxpayers to make up the difference.

So Irish farmers, who already survive on subsidies (an Irish sheep or beef farmer receives around 50% of their income from subsidies) want yet more money from the government. Money that is taken from other productive sectors of the economy.

However the rest of the economy is suffering at the moment too. No-one else can afford to pay more tax to prop up farmers. Subsidies need to reduce in these hard times, not increase.

New Zealand farmers suffer too with changing exchange rates. They tighten their belts and weather the hard times. That is the nature of any export industry. You can’t expect the government to pick up the tab whenever the market shifts.

In my dealings with the IFA I have found them to be sensible people who want the best for Irish farmers. However they appear to be so used to subsidies now that their automatic response to hardship is to get the government to fix it.

Much as I support Irish farmers, I do hope the Irish government declines this short-sighted request. The EU is already reintroducing export subsidies, which will benefit Irish farmers while damaging agriculture in the rest of the world and draining money from other sectors of the European economy. There is no need for more of this foolishness.

Hat tip: Homepaddock

Electronic tags on hold

National has promised farmers they will not commit to the National Animal Identification and Tracing scheme until after a full cost-benefit analysis. This is very good news. NAIT is a big-brother style scheme that would see every cow and deer in the country recorded on a central database, with the facility to record every sheep and goat as well in the future. Every animal must have an electronic eartag.

The idea behind NAIT is to provide full “paddock-to-plate” traceability of meat for European consumers, because such traceability is something the EU has implemented and EU farmers don’t find it fair that they have such regulation thrust on them yet their competitors (such as NZ) don’t do the same. And certainly, it isn’t fair. The EU should be ditching it, not expecting us to follow suit, but that is another story.

Anyway, paddock-to-plate traceability of meat is a myth. The tags get chopped off along with the head as soon as the animal is slaughtered in the works and it is very difficult to know what animal the meat coming out the other end actually came from. And for some cuts (like mince), the meat comes from hundreds of different animals all mixed together anyway, with traceability being completely impossible. We already have tags in all cattle, and plenty of farmers have stories about animals they believe have been mixed up in the works. Electronic tags won’t change that at all.

The system could also be used to help control disease outbreaks as theoretically the location of all animals would be known on a central database. In practice this won’t work, because as soon as you bring in such a system there is a motivation for people to not record some animals for various reasons such as home-kill meat – these are known as “ghost sheep” in Ireland and are very common. This completely undermines the value of the database.

One major concern is that the database could be used for other purposes, possibly against farmers. There is a strong precedent for this in New Zealand – in 1974 the firearms database was used to confiscate legally owned pistols from many people for example. The Federated Farmers have been concerned that the data could be used to enforce the ETS, or do who knows what.

I have no problem with the market providing a voluntary scheme if that is genuinely what consumers want. But I have yet to meet a consumer who cared about what precise animal their steak came from – most would prefer to not think about it coming from a cute cuddly animal at all. They just want to know that it is safe. This is a socialist scheme being pushed by the EU, for political purposes, and I hope National has the guts to leave it voluntary.

Law requiring fencing of farm ponds

Following the tragic death of Summer Frank in a farm effluent pond, do we need legislation requiring the fencing of such ponds? (Note first that in this case there was actually a fence between the house and the ponds, it just wasn’t child-proof and the gate may have been left open.)

As soon as this girl died the media were all talking about needing a new law to stop it happening in future. And I even heard Summer’s grandfather say on TV last night that we should have a law because he doesn’t want her death to be “in vain”.

The problem with this logic is that to follow it to its conclusion would mean that for every death that was not of natural causes we would need a new law against however that person died. How many people die of unnatural causes each year? How many new laws would that be? Eventually this just gets ridiculous. And accidents will still keep happening.

Summer Frank’s death was a tragedy. Would making a new law make her death not “in vain”? Of course not. Maybe her death will influence some parents watching the news to be more careful with their own children, which could be good, but you can’t make her death “ok” through legislation. It will always be a pointless tragedy.

Would a new law have prevented this death? Probably not. It was already a condition of Mr Frank’s sharemilking contract that a fence needed to be put up (according to TV3 news). Mr Frank had agreed to live in that house without a childproof fence for now, as he had not required the fence before he moved in, nor had he put up a fence himself. It was a lower priority for both him and the farm owner than other farm work before Summer’s death, because most people don’t expect their children to drown. That is human nature. Now it is a high priority for him, but unfortunately it is too late. Mr Frank has said himself:

“I was going to fence these ponds but they were made bigger and there was piles of dirt put up around them. I wished now that I’d just done it.”

Even with a law against it, people will still willingly choose to live in situations that are not perfectly safe, because that is often practical. They will be busy with other farm work and intend to put up the fence to satisfy the legal requirement when they have time – just as in this situation. A new law would be unlikely to change things much. But it would be an extra regulatory burden for all farmers in the country, even those who have no children living in their houses.

Federated Farmers have spoken a lot of sense on this issue:

Federated Farmers president Peter Adamski said it was nigh-on impossible to fence all farm ponds.

“The cost is prohibitive,” he said.

“It’s just part of the rural environment – there is water everywhere. Water troughs, ponds, and kids just go for it.

“You have to give them their boundaries and keep an eye on them.”

As has the farm owner:

[Mr Mullan] says the focus has shifted from Summer’s death and on to who is to blame for the death.

“All they are doing is trying to blame everything else but themselves.

“The whole thing has shifted away from the little girl’s death and it’s now all about trying to make the Mullans pay.

“You ask any farmers. They will have caravans and safely fenced-in areas in their cow shed so they know where their kids are when they are milking.

“We had it for our kids. You are responsible for your own kids to keep them safe on the farm.”

You can’t expect the government to fix everything. Ultimately you must take personal responsibility for your own life. Sometimes that can be very hard to come to grips with, as in this tragic situation.

Please keep the Frank family in your prayers.

“Unfenced” pond actually fenced

The recent death of Summer Frank in a farm effluent pond is a tragedy. I do not wish to make light of that at all. However I must point out a little-known fact that most of the media has ignored (I certainly haven’t seen it on the TV news).

Mr Mullan [the farm owner] is upset that a seven-wire fence around the paddock containing the effluent pond has not been mentioned until now.

“It was human error why the kid drowned. The fence is there, the gate was open.”

He says the gate separating the pond from the house was left open most of the time and Summer and Brodie found their way to the pond.

Mr Frank’s perspective (Summer’s father):

Asked what he thought had happened to cause the tragedy, Mr Frank said “I don’t know, those kids are just so quick.

“The house is in a separate paddock from the ponds. I built the fence between the house and tanker track and ponds, a seven-wire fence with four hot wires, but it’s a dairy farm fence, the kids can get underneath.

Also note:

But it took only a couple of minutes for them to toddle nearly 200m to the pond.

So the house was nearly 200m from the effluent pond (a fact concealed by the careful angle of shots taken for TV3 news last night, which made it look like the pond was just at the end of the lawn). And they are separated by a seven-wire fence with four hot wires (ie a very good fence for a dairy farm, given that 1-2 hot wires is perfectly sufficient for dairy cows in most circumstances), and a track.

Note that although the children could get through the fence, children can get through any farm fence, even sheep netting – children can get anywhere if you take your eyes off them for a second or two. No fence is totally reliable, especially (as Mr Mullan alleges) if you leave the gate open.

Just as in Gaza, the true situation is not necessarily what the media initially portray, you need to wait for the full facts before making a judgement. And the facts emerging in this case are quite interesting.

Family Party environment policy

My speech on the Family Party environmental and agricultural policy at the conference on Saturday:

My name is Samuel Dennis. I grew up on a farm in the Selwyn electorate, in Canterbury. My great-great-grandfather came to Selwyn from England in 1868, and I grew up on land that has been in the family since 1879. I have worked on a range of different farms around Canterbury, and have a Bachelor of Agricultural Science degree with Honours from Lincoln University. I am currently completing my doctorate in Soil Science, and was in Ireland over the last two years doing research for that. I have been married for 2 1/2 years and have a four-month-old son.

My great grandfather Ernest Dennis and his brother were founding members of the National Party in Hororata in 1936. My grandfather Gordon Dennis was on the executive committee of National in Selwyn for 28 years. He then stood as an independent candidate twice in the 80’s, before being a founding member of Christian Heritage in 1989 and standing for them in 1993 and 1996. It is great to be able to carry on this family heritage of political involvement in Selwyn as I stand before you today as The Family Party candidate for Selwyn. It is also an honour to keep on going where Christian Heritage failed, and to have Albert Ruijne, a founding board member of Christian Heritage, on our board today, and my grandfather Gordon Dennis helping me with my campaign.

New Zealand has a reputation for being clean and green. We live in a great country, and the more of the world I see the more I realise this.

We have a wonderful environment that New Zealand families enjoy. We can go tramping, hunting, fishing, jetboating, swimming – our environment provides us with a lot of enjoyment. But more importantly than that, it is our environment that provides us with clean water to drink, food to eat, air to breathe – we are totally reliant on our environment, and must preserve it, for our benefit, and also for our children and grandchildren.

Our thinking on the environment comes from the Biblical principle of responsible stewardship. Mankind was placed on earth to tend and keep it, while at the same time the environment is provided to us for our benefit. While it is popular in some circles to see humans as a disease on the earth, and that the earth would be better off if man did not exist, we reject this view. The environment exists for the benefit of Man, and this is why it is vital that we preserve and care for it. We don’t just want a healthy environment – we need a healthy environment.

For this reason we believe that minimising waste and pollution is an important and desirable goal. We believe in industrial progress, but believe it should not occur at the expense of the environment.

So how should we protect our environment?

We need practical policies that actually work. Where there are problems with the environment, we need to be able to measure them, and implement policies that will actually fix them.

But we should also do this using as little legislation as necessary. I have been in Ireland over the past two years. In Ireland there have been detailed laws to protect the environment, for example water quality, for many years now. In order to get subsidies how farmers operate is regulated down to the smallest degree. But it is difficult to know whether these restrictive policies have actually been working at all. Just this year a large study is being set up to figure out if these detailed regulations have actually been doing any good.

Ireland, and other European countries, have been tackling the issue the wrong way around. They have been regulating many little details, providing a lot of work for bureaucrats, but producing in some cases debatable environmental gains. We don’t want to fall into this trap. We must focus on results, and how to achieve them, rather than legislating every detail of how people operate without knowing the results.

Winston Churchill once said “If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law”, and this is a very important principle. People will obey a few basic laws. But if there are too many, people’s focus shifts to finding loopholes in the law and avoiding obeying it, which is completely counterproductive.

The Family Party wishes to cut to the heart of environmental issues and address the key problems, while avoiding a proliferation of regulations on minor details that may cause more frustration than benefit.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Global Warming is the biggest environmental issue we are dealing with today, and I am sure all of you are familiar with this.

But what you may not realise is that there is actually scientific disagreement on two things. Scientists disagree on how much of a problem it really is, with some saying it is not a problem at all. Those scientists that do accept it is a big issue disagree on whether we can actually stop it through emissions reductions, or whether this is a waste of money and we should be adapting to a changing climate instead. There is disagreement on what we should be doing about climate change.

Most other parties have accepted climate change is a massive issue, but one that can be stopped through emissions reductions, and are rushing through legislation to look like they are doing something about it.

An Emissions Trading Scheme was recently put into law by Labour, the Green party and New Zealand First, and is supported in principle (with an intention to tweak it a bit) by National and United Future. This scheme is supposed to be New Zealand’s way of combating climate change. It is the most comprehensive and hard-hitting emissions trading scheme in the world. But:
– It will cause NO discernible reduction in carbon emissions according to Greenpeace. Let me say that again: even Greenpeace says this scheme will do nothing for the environment.
– It could actually increase global greenhouse gas emissions. As it penalises businesses in New Zealand it may force them to move overseas. For example, the owners of the Tiwai Point Aluminium Smelter in Southland have indicated that they may have to move it off-shore. This smelter uses a lot of electricity, which currently comes primarily from renewable sources. If they moved to China for example, most of their electricity would come from coal. This would cause an increase in global emissions, for no reason.
– It will cost an enormous amount to do nothing. If businesses are forced offshore, there will be job losses in NZ, many families could have their primary income cut off. If the Tiwai Point smelter were to move offshore for example, the 900 staff they employ would lose their jobs, and other jobs in the wider community would probably go as well. It will also increase the cost of everything you buy, and could cost families $3,000 extra per year by 2025. So families will be hit from both ends, with less employment but higher costs. And all for no environmental benefit.

This scheme is pure greenwash. It is designed to make New Zealand look good to the United Nations and Europe, and back up Helen Clark’s United Nations “Champions of the Earth” environmental award by being the Prime Minister of the first country to introduce an Emissions Trading Scheme that includes all sectors. But it will do NOTHING for the environment, and could in fact damage it.

The Family Party would repeal this scheme.

In addition to emissions trading, other parties want to do lots of other fiddly things around climate change, and if you read their policies you will find such fiddly regulations littered throughout them. Here are a few examples from the transport policies of other parties:
– Labour has passed an Act requiring mandatory levels of biofuel in petrol and diesel to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, despite even the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment saying this Act should not be passed.
– The Green Party wants to force cars being imported to be more economical on average, despite people already buying more economical cars because the fuel price is so high – it is pointless to legislate for something that is already happening.
– United Future wants to require all new government vehicles to be hybrids, despite some research showing these are actually far worse for the environment than conventional cars.
– National wants to have no road user charges for electric cars, to promote them – and electric cars are good, there is nothing wrong with promoting them. But the problem with electric cars is not running costs, even with paying their fair share of the cost of road maintenance they are far cheaper to run than petrol vehicles. The problem is supply. Even if you got a free house with every electric car you bought, if you cannot go to a dealer and actually buy an electric car the scheme will do nothing.

All this is fiddling around the edges. Some of the fiddly policies of other parties are not entirely without merit. But they are primarily designed to sound good and buy votes, without actually doing anything for the environment. Furthermore each involves yet another piece of legislation for families to have to deal with.

The Family Party will not fiddle around with little vote-buying pieces of legislation like this. We want real, practical policies that address the real issues, actually help families, and help the environment. We call for a unified approach to climate change, rather than loads of little fiddly laws.

The Family Party is calling for a Royal Commission of Enquiry into Global Warming, to look at the scientific and economic facts, and design practical, cost-effective policy that actually solves the real issues.

The first job of the Commission will be to look into the evidence of the scientists who disagree with the IPCC and say global warming is not a problem, to determine whether there is any substance in these claims. If the Commission concludes that global warming is a real problem, its job will then be to work out whether we should be trying to stop it or adapting to it, and design policy to do this. Designing effective policy will be the biggest job of the Commission. In doing this the Commission will need to bear in mind the effect of this policy on our access to international markets.

We aren’t pretending to have all the answers. We don’t believe that any politician has all the answers. This approach will take this massive issue out of the hands of politicians, who care primarily about votes, and put it into the hands of the experts instead.

OTHER ISSUES:

We want a unified, practical approach to all environmental issues. Currently, each new issue gets a new piece of legislation to solve it, from either central or local government. But legislation is an inefficient way to solve environmental problems. Legislation is slow, as it has to wait its turn, and be debated and amended by politicians. It can take a long time from an issue being identified before legislation to solve it is actually in place. Furthermore, legislation can be inefficient, as it can result in one-size-fits-all solutions designed by bureaucrats, that may not be appropriate to solve complicated real problems on the ground.

The best way to solve environmental problems is through community- and industry-led initiatives. These initiatives are faster, because they can be implemented without waiting for legislation to be debated. They can be more efficient, as they draw on the expertise of the local people who are most familiar with the issues. And they can have far more willing participation, resulting in better outcomes, than if people are being forced to do something by legislation.

The Family Party will introduce a single unified process to allow environmental problems to be solved rapidly and flexibly as they arise.

Firstly, the problem must be measured. For example, if we have a polluted river, the level of pollution must be measured.

Secondly, a target must be identified, which is an acceptable condition for the environment. With the polluted river, this would be a target level of pollution that must be achieved.

Thirdly, the problem and target must be presented to the community and industry. They will be given an appropriate timeframe to identify a solution, and implement it. By the end of the period they must be on track towards achieving the target. With our polluted river example, factories may limit effluent discharges to the river. Farmers may restrict stock access to water. Households near the river may ensure their septic tanks are working correctly. The community would do whatever they felt was needed to fix the problem.

Finally, legislation may be considered ONLY if:
– after this time the problem is still not being solved, and
– a known solution exists that is expected to be much more effective than the community solution.

This process is very simple – identify the problem, present it to the community, if they don’t fix it, legislate.

The big advantage of this is that environmental problems can be solved rapidly, as the community will be encouraged to start doing something about it as soon as the problem is identified rather than waiting for legislation. There will be a strong motivation for people to fix it themselves, to avoid having legislation thrust upon them. But if legislation is required after all, no-one can complain as they had a chance to fix it themselves but blew it.

AGRICULTURE:

One large aspect of managing our environment in New Zealand is agriculture. This is because so much of our environment is managed by farmers. Agricultural policy also directly impacts on families because so many families derive their income from agriculture. 54% of New Zealand’s exports in 2007 were agricultural products. For this reason, agriculture provides employment and income for many families – and even here in Auckland, if many of you today were to trace back where your income ultimately comes from, you may well find it originally comes from agriculture.

The Family Party recognises that farmers know far more about farming than politicians do. Just like our environmental policy, our agricultural policy is designed to have minimal, yet effective, legislation, and as much as possible allow farmers to farm without politicians getting in their way.

The Emissions Trading Scheme could have a disastrous effect on agriculture, because agriculture is responsible for a high proportion of NZ’s emissions, and this could flow on to many of your own jobs. Dairy income could reduce by 12%, Beef by 21%, Sheep and Venison by around 40% – this is massive for such a large section of our economy. New Zealand still survives “off the sheep’s back” and we need to preserve this industry that underpins our country. Repealing the Emissions Trading Scheme and pursuing practical environmental policies is vital to keep our economy running, and preserve the income of our families.

Our community- and industry-led approach to environmental issues will be a welcome approach for farmers, that will prevent us ending up in the same over-regulated situation that European farmers have to deal with. We will be very cautious about any new bureaucracy that may be proposed, such as an animal identification scheme that is being designed at the moment, and will only support such bureaucracy if we are convinced that there are significant advantages to be gained from it and it has widespread farmer support. We will be reviewing the RMA to ensure that it is efficient, and while it is protecting New Zealands natural resources it does not also require unnecessary levels of bureaucracy around minor environmental issues.

SUMMARY:

In summary, we are calling for a unified, scientific approach to solving climate change. We will not impose costs on families for dubious benefit. We reject the ineffective legislation being promoted at the moment, and will repeal the Emissions Trading Scheme. We will establish a Royal Commission of Enquiry to have climate change policy designed by the experts rather than politicians.

We will establish a clear approach to solving all environmental issues, that focuses on achieving results, and promotes community- and industry-led initiatives before resorting to legislation.

And we will support farmers, as the caretakers of so much of our environment.

You will notice that our environmental policy is much shorter than that of many other parties. This is because we don’t have a load of new regulations we want to impose on families. Rather we want to get down to the fundamental issues, fix those well, and otherwise let families get on with their lives and enjoy our great environment.

Thankyou for listening.

Compulsory tagging of animals

The NAIT scheme, which would mandate electronic tagging of cattle and deer and provide the potential to extend this to other livestock, is receiving a mixed response from farmers. It is european-socialist style agricultural policy, pushed by Jim Anderton, and having been in Europe I am immediately suspicious of such schemes.

The uses of the scheme include:

• Identification of animals for biosecurity reasons, such as if there was a foot & mouth outbreak. The current tagging scheme does achieve this too, but in less detail.
• Theoretical tracking of food from “paddock to plate”. This could be a marketing benefit in Europe. However the accuracy is debatable as the tags are chopped off the animals at the works and there is no guarantee which animal is ending up on your plate, and many farmers have stories of animals they believe have been misidentified using current tagging schemes. Cuts like mince come from hundreds of different animals mixed together so this would be irrelevant anyway.
• Farmers could use the data for their own purposes if desired, but they can put tags on themselves and do that anyway if they like.
• The information could be used by the government for other purposes, such as enforcing the Emissions Trading Scheme. This is extremely worrying, as there is a lot of possibility here for the data to be abused. There is a strong parallel with the use of the gun register to confiscate pistols in 1974 from people who until then were legally owning them.

As you can see there are benefits and disadvantages, my gut feeling is that there are more disadvantages than benefits, but it is a very complicated issue. The primary reason for farmers to support it is to gain marketing advantages for our produce in Europe over competing countries such as Argentina. Federated Farmers does not appear to have an official position on it yet probably for this reason.

I disliked the tagging and central recording systems of all livestock in Ireland, and some Irish and British MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) are currently resisting plans to extend electronic tagging to sheep and goats there (they already have mandatory tagging, just not electronic tagging). The major problem with such tagging schemes is that there is always a motivation to have a few animals that are not on the system (‘ghost sheep’ in Ireland), and this natural inclination to avoid the rules greatly reduces the biosecurity benefit of such schemes, which is the major reason for them in the first place.

Battery hens healthier than free range

A government-sponsored report into animal welfare in poultry has found that battery-farmed hens are healthier than free-range hens. We will have to wait until November for the full report, but this is certainly interesting. It shows how animal welfare issues aren’t always clear-cut, there are often both benefits and disadvantages in either direction.

Formula marketed as better than breastmilk in China

With the recent tainted formula scare in China I immediately became suspicious – why are so many Chinese using formula anyway? It is a poor country, surely they would be breastfeeding? Sure enough, just like in the West in the 40s and 50s, formula is being promoted in China as better than breastmilk.

The report concludes that an important reason for these statistics is aggressive advertising by infant formula companies. After hearing infant formula ads touting the product’s “nutritious matter beneficial to children’s brain development,” 57% of mothers were willing to buy formula.

According to the report, much of this advertising is illegal. Under Chinese consumer protection regulations, ads can’t claim or hint that a product is a replacement for breast milk. Nor are ads permitted to use images of breast feeding women and babies. Nonetheless, infant formula companies often flout these regulations and engage in other forms of “stealth” advertising and product placement, including promotional give-aways and sponsorship of health hot lines or baby feeding forums.

This is very worrying, for a number of reasons. We know very well now that breastmilk is far better than formula. The World Health Organisation recommends babies are exclusively breastfed till 6 months, then continue to be breastfed until at least 2 years, with no formula used at any stage. This knowledge is well established in Western medical circles now, and although some parents are forced to use formula for medical reasons, and others will choose to use formula, for example for convenience if the mother is returning to work, they at least have access to the best science.

The official Plunket recommendation in NZ is for babies to be “breastfed for at least the first 6 months”, which is far from the ideal WHO recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding as it allows topping up with formula, and this outdated practice appears to be commonly recommended by some Plunket nurses (Plunket probably doesn’t recommend it officially, but some nurses are still recommending this). However this is still a lot better than saying formula is better than breastmilk, as appears to be the case in China.

This is a serious concern for NZ, because dairy exports provide so much income to our country. Are our dairy exports being marketed honestly in China? Officially it is illegal for them not to be, but in practice, is this the case? It is illegal to contaminate milk, yet they do that too (and this isn’t the first instance, it happened in 2004 as well). This is a very serious issue for an agricultural nation such as ourselves.

True situation with 1080

Further to my previous post on the Kiwi Party’s poorly thought out vote-buying policy of banning aerial 1080 drops, there has been an excellent article on this issue in the Waikato Times.

This article points out at length all the problems with 1080, and interviews several people about it, most of whom are opposed to it. But even those opposed to aerial 1080 are not suggesting banning it:

Dean Lugton says children used to come to his farm and he would take them hunting in the bush.

“We couldn’t do it this year because of the aerial drop (at the Rangitoto Range),” he says.

“Everyone understands there are areas that they need to use 1080 in but why use it in areas that are totally able to be hunted on?” he says. “You can hunt the Rangitoto, you can walk over it, I have been for 18-19 years. I don’t think it is an area that needs to be bombed with the amount of 1080 they have been using. It is wrecking recreational hunting.”

Read the whole article. These people have serious concerns about the effects of 1080 in particular places where it is used. But they also understand there are only alternatives in accessible areas.

But Paul Etheredge from Ti Miro, whose property is near to where a aerial drop was carried out last year, says he sees 1080 as a “necessary tool for controlling possums”.

“I have no concerns about the way it is done. I would rather see it done some other way but I can’t see any biological control in the pipeline for quite a while,” Mr Etheredge says.

We need to continue research into alternatives, and encourage alternatives where they exist. Hopefully we can eventually stop aerial application of 1080, once we have found an alternative. But we cannot jump to knee-jerk vote-buying “solutions” on this or any other serious issue. Policy must be practical.