Foot-and-mouth disease — What can sheep farmers do?
Using MyOSPRI to record sheep mob movements will help a biosecurity response team in the event of a disease outbreak in New Zealand.
Rapidly moving diseases like foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) can be devastating to the primary sector and New Zealand’s economy.
Having accurate, readily accessible data about where animals are, including farm locations and pick-up addresses, will vastly improve our ability to launch an effective response in the event of a disease outbreak.
Improve biosecurity by using MyOSPRI to record sheep mob movements
Sheep farmers can help improve the accuracy and useability of data a biosecurity response team will need during an outbreak, by signing up to MyOSPRI. This is our new online customer portal, which has replaced the electronic Animal Status Declaration (eASD) system.
Sheep farmers can provide mob-level tracing by using MyOSPRI to:
- register their farm locations and pick-up addresses
- send online farm-to-farm and farm-to-meat processor ASDs (paper ASDs are still required for saleyards).
Paper-based ASDs aren’t collated in a centralised database, which means it’s harder to access them quickly to help trace disease.