Woodhouse’s Massive Bungle Sees Animal Feed Classed High Hazard

National’s scrambling beltway bureaucracy has inadvertently included animal feed crops such as hay and silage as “high hazards,” making pastoral farms high hazard by default.

“This is the sort of incompetent scrambling that ought to see this hopeless Minister sacked,” says New Zealand First Leader and Member of Parliament for Northland Rt Hon Winston Peters.

“While the media were titivated by worms, they and Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety Michael Woodhouse’s urban policy advisors slipped the innocuous sounding ‘A015 Other Crop Growing’ into the high hazard list.

“But for those of us who understand farming, obviously not National MPs, this means pasture grown for hay or silage as well as widely used feed crops are now high hazard.

“So it is low risk to apparently farm livestock, but high risk once you grow and harvest feed crops and make hay. This creates a massive operational and administrative mess on-farm.

“So much for National being the farmers’ party. It is the sort of sloppy incompetence born of last-minute desperation. We could have tidied up the existing legislation but no, Mr Woodhouse wanted his magnum opus that’s fast becoming his parvum opus.

“It punishes innovators like 2010 South Island Farmer of the Year, Doug Avery, because lucerne is completely within the ‘A015 Other Crop Growing’ category. The property he farms with his son is high hazard because of Mr Woodhouse’s bungle.

“No doubt the media will have fun pointing out hops are included as a high hazard crop along with lavender but this is no joke and shows how these reforms are a debacle.

“And where is the president of Federated Farmers? Silence, despite two of his industry groups, goats and bees, being high hazard along with a fair chunk of Federated Farmers Grain and Seed.

“That cocky Minister Woodhouse told media that he hadn't ‘heard from a single farmer … or from Federated Farmers’. I think that’ll change now,” says Mr Peters.

ENDS

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