Meat from the 22,300 cattle to be culled to prevent the spread of the cattle disease Mycoplasma bovis will be exported.
Even if some ends up in New Zealand supermarkets, it will still be safe to eat, the Ministries of Health (MOH) and Primary Industries (MPI) say.
New Zealanders may in fact already have eaten meat from cattle that has been infected by Mycoplasma, because the disease occurs in Australia, which exports beef across the Tasman.
"The cull will have no impact on domestic meat prices and the product will likely be exported," Meat Industry Association chief executive Tim Ritchie said.
Last year about 2.4 million cattle were killed, mostly for export. Even though the Mycoplasma cull is large, it had to be seen in the context of the annual slaughter, Ritchie said.
In November last year the first major cull of livestock occurred, with 4000 cattle killed, many of them off farms owned by rich listers Aad and Wilma van Leeuwen. The disease was first reported on one of their South Canterbury farms in July last year.
Mycoplasma is common globally in cattle but last year's discovery was a first for New Zealand, prompting thousands of tests and raising questions about how it came into the country, which have not yet been answered.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) has released a risk assessment of Mycoplasma and human health, on the potential for people to be infected through contact with livestock.
It said "based on the evidence to date, Mycoplasma bovis is considered a very low risk to human health".
There have been two reports of M. bovis reported in humans, in people whose immune systems were already compromised. In both cases patients responded positively to the antiobiotic tetracycline.
MOH pointed out that humans were not routinely screened, and therefore sub-clinical infections in humans could not be quantified using current data cannot be quantified.
MPI said M bovis posed no risk to meat or dairy products.
"The disease is not listed by the World Organisation for Animal Health and is present in most countries in the world. Europe, the US, UK, China and Canada, for example, have Mycoplasma bovis in their normal cattle supply, and human disease is not reported as an issue. These countries continue to successfully farm and trade in animal products."
"When the disease is introduced in a new region, such as in Sweden in 2011, this hasn't caused an increase in autoimmune or other disease - not in exposed farm workers nor in the population as a whole," an MPI spokesman said.
Attempts by the media to speak with affected farmers - except the van Leeuwens and Winton's Alfons and Gea Zeestraten - have been unsuccessful.
Federated Farmers dairy chairman Chris Lewis said it was understandable why farmers would not speak out, because they were thinking of their futures and would not want to be associated with the disease.
Meat processors have also been unwilling to talk about the logistics of handling Mycoplasma-diseased cattle.
South Canterbury Federated Farmers dairy chairman Ryan O'Sullivan said it was likely that more than half the cattle affected were in his region.
"Obviously for the affected farmers it's devastating. For the remainder of the farming community, they would be tentatively pleased that there's a way forward," he said.
"That said it doesn't automatically assume that there's not going to be a positive test sometime in the future, but it does lessen the risk of it."
GERARD HUTCHING
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