Farmers in the Waikato, Canterbury and Horizons regions are being encouraged to attend their upcoming Regional Council annual planning hearings, for fears of funding cuts to the tuberculosis programme.

The Animal Health Board is urging herd owners to appear at the meetings in a show of support for the successful TBFree scheme.

Last year Horizons in the Manawatu and Environment Waikato both proposed cutting contributions to the TBFree scheme. Horisons opted not to, but Environment Waikato did make the cut to its TB contribution.

Animal Health Board CEO William McCook says the chance of losses to funding losses is a real concern.

“The draft plans published by the Councils have proposals to cut the funding.

"At the moment they’ve called for submissions before making final decisions, so we are hoping that by getting farming groups to submit and  support the TB strategy, the councils will reconsider”.

At the moment, for every one hundred thousand dollars invested by a Regional Council, the farming sector and Government contribute an average of a million dollars.

William McCook says if the funding were to be cut, there could be serious consequences.

"The programmes have been going for many years and they've been extremely successfu. 

"The biggest and most important component is the control of TB in wildlife, mainly opossum, so you can imagine if the million dollars was cut from the wildlife control programme it would mean a very big impact on the ground.

"So we really can't afford to jeopardise the progress that has been made, and also risk the resurgence of TB in wildlife".

New Zealand’s TB control programme has made significant gains over the past 15 years, with infected herd numbers dropping from more than 17 thousand, to fewer than one hundred today.