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OSPRI Extends Support To Flood-affected Canterbury Farmers
The animal disease management agency acknowledges it is a stressful and distressing time for farmers, their families, and communities.
OSPRI’s upper South Island regional team is working with the emergency response teams in the Canterbury region. They have been in touch with MPI, Rural Support Trusts, and the Animal Evacuation Response Team based at SPCA Christchurch.
"Our message is to stay safe and look after one another and follow Civil Defence advice. We have extended the timeline for declaring your NAIT obligations,"says OSPRI Head of Traceability Kevin Forward.
"We appreciate this adverse event has happened during the Moving Day period, one of the busiest times of the year for animal movements. But we hope that giving people a bit of breathing room by extending some timeframes, will help at this difficult time," says Mr Forward.
As a result of the extended timeframes the following conditions apply:
-Any PICA registrations - to be done within 7 days until the end of the local state of emergency.
-Declare all animal movements within 7 days until the end of the local state of emergency.
-Any untagged animals that are moved must be registered in NAIT within 7 days of the end of the local state of emergency.
-Animal deaths - to be declared within 21 days after the end of the local state of emergency.
Given the importance of animal traceability and biosecurity, OSPRI is advising farmers to still tag and register their animals before moving.
Where possible, farmers should record any dead stock in their NAIT account and check if any NAIT tags have been lost or misplaced in the flooding.
SUPPORT AVAILABLE
-If you need help with domestic or lifestyle animals, please contact ??- 03 349 7057.
-For commercial farm assistance call MPI on 0800 00 83 33.
-If you need emergency feed, help moving stock or cleaning up, please call Federated Farmers freephone 0800 376 646, option 2 or the Rural Support Trust on 0800 787 254.
If you require more information about tagging and registering your animals over this period, you can find it here: https://www.ospri.co.nz/news-and-events
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