The country’s pork governing body is warning the disease threat to New Zealand piggeries is bigger and more expensive than ever before.

New Zealand Pork CEO Sam McIvor told the primary production select committee looking into Biosecurity reform that swine disease PMWS has so far cost the country nearly $50 million.

Mr McIvor said since 2003 when PMWS was discovered in Huntly, it has ‘exploded’ across the country, spread by gulls, sparrows and weaner pigs, and is now present in 80 percent of herds.

On top of this, there’s another global hog disease threatening the industry – Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, or PIRRS.

Mr McIvor says the past has shown it’s not prudent to take risks with our Biosecurity.

“What we’re saying to MAF is control it before the border, don’t let it get beyond the border.

“When you let it into the country you have to rely on a whole lot of people and a whole lot of processes to go right.

“You can’t police it, or control it, and it’s really hard to prosecute people around it.”

“It’s different to a pest where you might see eggs or the insect, with a virus you don’t know.

“The first thing you know is you’ve got a sick pig, or a dead pig, and you say ‘what have we got here?’”

 Sam McIvor says the new diseases they’re seeing across all industries are more aggressive and harder to contain than ever before.

 “The reality is that more and more we’re dealing with unpredictable viruses, and viruses that move incredibly quickly.

 While the effects could devastate the industry, neither virus has any human health implications.