January 13, 2025 • 12 mins
Facial Eczema is becoming more widespread in New Zealand, costing NZ’s economy $332 million annually. In part one of a special four-part podcast series, The Country’s Rowena Duncum is joined by Dr Suzi Keeling to look at key aspects of the seven-year Eliminating Facial Eczema’s Impacts programme – a joint collaboration between Beef + Lamb NZ and MPI, with contributions from farmers and industry experts.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Eliminating facial XMAS impacts with Beef and Lamb New Zealand,
powered by the Country.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello and welcome into the special edition podcast and association
with Beef and Lamb New Zealand looking at facial XMA
and our nation's livestock. My name is Rowena Duncan. My
pleasure to be your host for this. I myself am
a former farmer. I've seen facial XMA in livestock firsthand.
But joining me, you're not just going to hear me ramble.
(00:26):
Joining me for a farm or expert commentary on this, though,
is doctor Susie Keeling, head of Science and Research at
Beef and Lamb New Zealand. Hello, Susie, welcome in.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
It's great to have you with me. I'm really interested
to get your take on facial XMA. But first of all, Susie,
what's your background? What has led you to this point.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
So I've been with Beef and New Zealand about seven
years now, and I think I always describe myself as
a nxbag scientist. I've had lots of different opportunities over
the years to do all sorts of amazing science. But
I think that's one of the reasons why I love
working with farmers, because they deal with so many different
things in their biological systems. So whether it's animal health,
(01:09):
environmental health, you know, like the health of the farmer themselves.
So it's really bored and it's really interesting and really challenging.
So that's why I'm particularly passionate about this particular program
as well.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Fantastic, ma'am am. I detecting a wee bit of an
accent there.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Quite possibly, although I have been here since two thousand
and six, so this is definitely homes and my daughter
has a New Zealand accent, so we are definitely embedded.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I love it, love it.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Where were you born Malaysia? Now, yes, a little bit different,
but now I've moved a lot, but yeah, have been
in New Zealand for a quite a long time. Now.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Oh fantastic. Well, let's move on to look at the
eve EI program Eliminating Facial Impact. Tell me about this.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
So this is a program that will go for seven years,
and we were fortunate enough to secure post funding from
MPI Sustainable Food and Fiber Future Fund and so all
up we've got about twenty point seven million dollars over
the next seven years to develop the new tools and
solutions in partnership with farmers to help them manage and
(02:15):
ultimately eliminate the impacts of facial exma.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
So why in particular facial exma, Like as I mentioned
in the start, I've seen it in livestock and it's
really unpleasant to deal with for both the farmer and
the animal. Is that kind of a bit behind it?
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah, So I think if I think back to when
I first started a bee for lamb, it's one of
the things that was presented to me is you know
something we really needed to step up and make an
impact on. And for those that aren't familiar with it,
it's a severe disease you know, that affects pastoral grade livestock.
It's pretty significant impact on the New Zealand economy as well,
about three hundred and thirty two million dollars annually, and
(02:53):
we suspect that that's probably quite conservative. And what we
know about the disease is that it's caused by a
toxin produced by a fungus. Now, historically this fungus was
pretty much thought to only cause problems in the North old,
but we're certainly seeing it to new regions, primarily due
to a change in climate. And the other thing around
(03:16):
facial exzma is it's often really difficult to detect if
an animal's been impacted until it's too late. So it's
a really complex problem and there's probably quite a few
gaps in our knowledge, and so this program presents an
opportunity to really look at it from a number of
different angles, bring in quite a diverse kind of group
(03:39):
of scientists and researchers and farmers to work together to
solve what is really an old problem for New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, and it's a really heartbreaking problem as well, Susie.
This is the kind of program you don't want to
have to exist because you don't want it to be
a problem, But it does exist. So it's good that
more research is being done into.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
It, definitely, And I think you know, like you know,
I'm not a farmer, I won't claim to have that
level of excity, but just the conversations you know, that
I've had with farmers during the course of developing this program,
it's heartbreaking to hear what they've had to go through
in terms of having to put down hundreds of stock
or feeling powers because it isn't actually an affect of
(04:22):
treatment or there's limited preventive options available as well. So
not only are we hoping to improve the welfare outcomes
of New Zealand livestock, it's also the well being of
our farmers and were all professionals as well. That's really
important to the program.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, that's great scope to have that included as well.
Look are you looking at going the whole hog and
eliminating facial exama or I guess that's possibly not possible.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
So this was something that where we were kind of developing,
you know, of the research program that we went backwards
and forwards with a little bit and we probably arrived
at the conclusion that trying to eradicate or kill the
fungus on such a large scale probably wasn't going to
be feasible. There are certainly aspects of the program that
(05:12):
will evaluate, you know, maybe through bio control or different
treatment options, whether or not we can try and kill
the fungus or knock it down, shall we say, But
we kind of felt it wasn't really an option that
was going to future proof farm system because we don't
know where it's going to keep spreading. We don't know
what it's going to cause in the future. So really
the program is around having kind of a well rounded
(05:33):
approach to thinking about the animals, environment and the people
so that we can future proof farm systems to kind of,
you know, facehead on whatever future challenges Social Expo presents for.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
How hard has it been or how easy has it
been to get other stakeholders on board, Susie.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
It's been a It probably a lot of work in
terms of a lot of conversations, but in terms of
the prior and the passion from others in the sector
who wanted to put their hands up and be part
of the program, I have to say that when I
look back to where we started with some of those
preliminary conversations, like the response is probably quite overwhelming in
(06:14):
that we have about our fifteen or sixteen industry partners
who're all going to be involved in the program in
some capacity but not that providing samples, access to field
trials or expertise, as well as hundreds of farmers all
indicating that this is something that they want to be
part of the potential for like the I guess the
(06:34):
collaborative momentum that we can generate from this seven year
program is going to be quite phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah, wow, Wow, I can't wait to be at the
even of the seven year program, Susie and find out,
you know, what you've learned from it. Look, what are
some of the key aspects of this program.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Yeah, at a high level, we've probably break the program
down into five kind of work streams or different areas.
The first one is really taking a step back and
thinking about what do we need to know about the
fungus that's associated with spacial exer and how impacts on
livestock health. If we look kind of back over the
(07:15):
literature of the last kind of a few decades, there
were kind of clusters of work that were done and
then you know, the funding would obviously dry up, or
perhaps it wasn't a particularly bad facial excess season. So
it's almost like a bit of a roller coaster in
terms of the information that we know about the fungus.
And so really this opportunity is about getting a better
understanding of the genetics of the fungus, so we can
(07:37):
use some new GNA technology to that finding out more
about where the fungus is around new Zealand and for
that we have launched our shit poof study which we
may have heard of, yeah, but also finding out a
little bit more about how the fungus actually affects the
animal before it's too late. So that's kind of the
laying the foundations for some of the research that's going
(07:59):
to happening on the program. We've then got another work
stream which is thinking broader about the impact. So I've
already kind of mentioned about the financial, social, and emotional
tolls of fe and really this is an opportunity for
us to build on our existing knowledge and being able
to go a little bit deeper in terms of the
(08:21):
financial impact and emotional effects of fee. But part of
that is also around us then having kind of a
benchmark for the program, if you like, so as we
move forward, we can kind of look back and see
are we making a genuine impact, is it positive? Is
there something that we could be doing differently, what are
(08:41):
we learning, how do we need to think about extension
and adoption going forward? All those sorts of things as well.
And then the third work stream is around developing tools
and solutions and so for this one, where in the
first probably two to three years it's pretty broad what
we're looking at, So we're looking at new tools to
(09:04):
potentially reduce risks on pasta, improving livestock health, protecting the environment,
and the approach that we're taking is pretty broad and
pretty creative. So there'd be about nine to twelve different
projects that will all initially go through kind of a
discovery phase and seeing if they have potential to be
useful on farms, which then leads me to our delivering
(09:28):
those practical solutions for farmers and oral professionals. And this
is where our dedicated evaluation group will come in. This
will be a group of farmers and real professionals that
will be kind of guiding us and steering us and
giving us kind of feedback on the utility of some
of these things that we're going to be discovered in
(09:48):
the research. But our goals in terms of being able
to say is this going to be worth doing some
more validation on, is that if it's championed by farmers,
faith for animals, environmentally friendly, that's a science is sound,
that it's cost effective. But also one of the things
that I possibly didn't mention in the beginning is that
(10:10):
you know, facial excellents it doesn't discriminate, so it affects
most ruminant species. So we need whatever tools and solutions
we produce to be adaptable across a number of different
farming systems.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, exactly, a good point. And there must be a
final key aspect, and there is well number five.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
So number five I kind of like to think of
like the workstream that sort of embraces all the other ones.
So this is a big part of where we're looking
to engage and partner for impact. Because research can be great,
it can have amazing recognition from you a kind of
a scientific peer review perspective, but if it sits on
its shelf or it doesn't get used and it doesn't
(10:51):
have a pathway for use, but it's it's kind of
wasted and we've lost opportunities there. So that's a big
part of how we're going to be working with farmers
to their expertise, share findings, and ensure that the program's
tools and insights have kind of the useful real world
relevance and impact. And it's also about how we get
(11:11):
the messages about the program out to our farmers as well.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, fantastic. So the look if people want to find
out more about the e FI program. Where can they go?
Speaker 3 (11:24):
So probably the first point would be to go to
the befa lam website and search facial xmas. Or you
can go to beflam in z dot com forward slash
e f E I and you'll find some information about
the program there as well. And probably also good to
sign up to the text alert service, which you can
(11:45):
do through the befal Lam web page. So we've got
that up and running, and also be on the lookout
through Instagram about any of our stories to do with
a social ex mesis.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah. Absolutely. As the series continues, we've got four episodes
looking at the e f E program. Up next, I'm
going to be chatting to Becky Diamond looking deeper at
the economic and social impacts of FE and what the
program aims to achieve as well, going beyond just the overview,
Doctor Susie Keeling heard of science and research at beef
(12:15):
and lamb New Zealand. I'd heard about this program, but
I didn't understand the ins and outs of it before,
So thank you so much for taking your time to
join me today and just Dale dalve deeper into why
this program has come about and what the need is
from our Kiwi farmers. I really look forward to seeing
as I mentioned, those results, and see what our chat
(12:35):
will be like in seven years time. But thanks so
much for your time today.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Oh thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I really appreciated the chat eliminating facial Xmas impacts with
beef and lamb New Zealand powered by the Country
Eliminating facial XMAS impacts with Beef and Lamb New Zealand,
powered by the Country.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello and welcome into the special edition podcast and association
with Beef and Lamb New Zealand looking at facial XMA
and our nation's livestock. My name is Rowena Duncan. My
pleasure to be your host for this. I myself am
a former farmer. I've seen facial XMA in livestock firsthand.
But joining me, you're not just going to hear me ramble.
(00:26):
Joining me for a farm or expert commentary on this, though,
is doctor Susie Keeling, head of Science and Research at
Beef and Lamb New Zealand. Hello, Susie, welcome in.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
It's great to have you with me. I'm really interested
to get your take on facial XMA. But first of all, Susie,
what's your background? What has led you to this point.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
So I've been with Beef and New Zealand about seven
years now, and I think I always describe myself as
a nxbag scientist. I've had lots of different opportunities over
the years to do all sorts of amazing science. But
I think that's one of the reasons why I love
working with farmers, because they deal with so many different
things in their biological systems. So whether it's animal health,
(01:09):
environmental health, you know, like the health of the farmer themselves.
So it's really bored and it's really interesting and really challenging.
So that's why I'm particularly passionate about this particular program
as well.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Fantastic, ma'am am. I detecting a wee bit of an
accent there.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Quite possibly, although I have been here since two thousand
and six, so this is definitely homes and my daughter
has a New Zealand accent, so we are definitely embedded.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I love it, love it.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Where were you born Malaysia? Now, yes, a little bit different,
but now I've moved a lot, but yeah, have been
in New Zealand for a quite a long time. Now.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Oh fantastic. Well, let's move on to look at the
eve EI program Eliminating Facial Impact. Tell me about this.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
So this is a program that will go for seven years,
and we were fortunate enough to secure post funding from
MPI Sustainable Food and Fiber Future Fund and so all
up we've got about twenty point seven million dollars over
the next seven years to develop the new tools and
solutions in partnership with farmers to help them manage and
(02:15):
ultimately eliminate the impacts of facial exma.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
So why in particular facial exma, Like as I mentioned
in the start, I've seen it in livestock and it's
really unpleasant to deal with for both the farmer and
the animal. Is that kind of a bit behind it?
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah, So I think if I think back to when
I first started a bee for lamb, it's one of
the things that was presented to me is you know
something we really needed to step up and make an
impact on. And for those that aren't familiar with it,
it's a severe disease you know, that affects pastoral grade livestock.
It's pretty significant impact on the New Zealand economy as well,
about three hundred and thirty two million dollars annually, and
(02:53):
we suspect that that's probably quite conservative. And what we
know about the disease is that it's caused by a
toxin produced by a fungus. Now, historically this fungus was
pretty much thought to only cause problems in the North old,
but we're certainly seeing it to new regions, primarily due
to a change in climate. And the other thing around
(03:16):
facial exzma is it's often really difficult to detect if
an animal's been impacted until it's too late. So it's
a really complex problem and there's probably quite a few
gaps in our knowledge, and so this program presents an
opportunity to really look at it from a number of
different angles, bring in quite a diverse kind of group
(03:39):
of scientists and researchers and farmers to work together to
solve what is really an old problem for New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, and it's a really heartbreaking problem as well, Susie.
This is the kind of program you don't want to
have to exist because you don't want it to be
a problem, But it does exist. So it's good that
more research is being done into.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
It, definitely, And I think you know, like you know,
I'm not a farmer, I won't claim to have that
level of excity, but just the conversations you know, that
I've had with farmers during the course of developing this program,
it's heartbreaking to hear what they've had to go through
in terms of having to put down hundreds of stock
or feeling powers because it isn't actually an affect of
(04:22):
treatment or there's limited preventive options available as well. So
not only are we hoping to improve the welfare outcomes
of New Zealand livestock, it's also the well being of
our farmers and were all professionals as well. That's really
important to the program.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, that's great scope to have that included as well.
Look are you looking at going the whole hog and
eliminating facial exama or I guess that's possibly not possible.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
So this was something that where we were kind of developing,
you know, of the research program that we went backwards
and forwards with a little bit and we probably arrived
at the conclusion that trying to eradicate or kill the
fungus on such a large scale probably wasn't going to
be feasible. There are certainly aspects of the program that
(05:12):
will evaluate, you know, maybe through bio control or different
treatment options, whether or not we can try and kill
the fungus or knock it down, shall we say, But
we kind of felt it wasn't really an option that
was going to future proof farm system because we don't
know where it's going to keep spreading. We don't know
what it's going to cause in the future. So really
the program is around having kind of a well rounded
(05:33):
approach to thinking about the animals, environment and the people
so that we can future proof farm systems to kind of,
you know, facehead on whatever future challenges Social Expo presents for.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
How hard has it been or how easy has it
been to get other stakeholders on board, Susie.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
It's been a It probably a lot of work in
terms of a lot of conversations, but in terms of
the prior and the passion from others in the sector
who wanted to put their hands up and be part
of the program, I have to say that when I
look back to where we started with some of those
preliminary conversations, like the response is probably quite overwhelming in
(06:14):
that we have about our fifteen or sixteen industry partners
who're all going to be involved in the program in
some capacity but not that providing samples, access to field
trials or expertise, as well as hundreds of farmers all
indicating that this is something that they want to be
part of the potential for like the I guess the
(06:34):
collaborative momentum that we can generate from this seven year
program is going to be quite phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah, wow, Wow, I can't wait to be at the
even of the seven year program, Susie and find out,
you know, what you've learned from it. Look, what are
some of the key aspects of this program.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Yeah, at a high level, we've probably break the program
down into five kind of work streams or different areas.
The first one is really taking a step back and
thinking about what do we need to know about the
fungus that's associated with spacial exer and how impacts on
livestock health. If we look kind of back over the
(07:15):
literature of the last kind of a few decades, there
were kind of clusters of work that were done and
then you know, the funding would obviously dry up, or
perhaps it wasn't a particularly bad facial excess season. So
it's almost like a bit of a roller coaster in
terms of the information that we know about the fungus.
And so really this opportunity is about getting a better
understanding of the genetics of the fungus, so we can
(07:37):
use some new GNA technology to that finding out more
about where the fungus is around new Zealand and for
that we have launched our shit poof study which we
may have heard of, yeah, but also finding out a
little bit more about how the fungus actually affects the
animal before it's too late. So that's kind of the
laying the foundations for some of the research that's going
(07:59):
to happening on the program. We've then got another work
stream which is thinking broader about the impact. So I've
already kind of mentioned about the financial, social, and emotional
tolls of fe and really this is an opportunity for
us to build on our existing knowledge and being able
to go a little bit deeper in terms of the
(08:21):
financial impact and emotional effects of fee. But part of
that is also around us then having kind of a
benchmark for the program, if you like, so as we
move forward, we can kind of look back and see
are we making a genuine impact, is it positive? Is
there something that we could be doing differently, what are
(08:41):
we learning, how do we need to think about extension
and adoption going forward? All those sorts of things as well.
And then the third work stream is around developing tools
and solutions and so for this one, where in the
first probably two to three years it's pretty broad what
we're looking at, So we're looking at new tools to
(09:04):
potentially reduce risks on pasta, improving livestock health, protecting the environment,
and the approach that we're taking is pretty broad and
pretty creative. So there'd be about nine to twelve different
projects that will all initially go through kind of a
discovery phase and seeing if they have potential to be
useful on farms, which then leads me to our delivering
(09:28):
those practical solutions for farmers and oral professionals. And this
is where our dedicated evaluation group will come in. This
will be a group of farmers and real professionals that
will be kind of guiding us and steering us and
giving us kind of feedback on the utility of some
of these things that we're going to be discovered in
(09:48):
the research. But our goals in terms of being able
to say is this going to be worth doing some
more validation on, is that if it's championed by farmers,
faith for animals, environmentally friendly, that's a science is sound,
that it's cost effective. But also one of the things
that I possibly didn't mention in the beginning is that
(10:10):
you know, facial excellents it doesn't discriminate, so it affects
most ruminant species. So we need whatever tools and solutions
we produce to be adaptable across a number of different
farming systems.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, exactly, a good point. And there must be a
final key aspect, and there is well number five.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
So number five I kind of like to think of
like the workstream that sort of embraces all the other ones.
So this is a big part of where we're looking
to engage and partner for impact. Because research can be great,
it can have amazing recognition from you a kind of
a scientific peer review perspective, but if it sits on
its shelf or it doesn't get used and it doesn't
(10:51):
have a pathway for use, but it's it's kind of
wasted and we've lost opportunities there. So that's a big
part of how we're going to be working with farmers
to their expertise, share findings, and ensure that the program's
tools and insights have kind of the useful real world
relevance and impact. And it's also about how we get
(11:11):
the messages about the program out to our farmers as well.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, fantastic. So the look if people want to find
out more about the e FI program. Where can they go?
Speaker 3 (11:24):
So probably the first point would be to go to
the befa lam website and search facial xmas. Or you
can go to beflam in z dot com forward slash
e f E I and you'll find some information about
the program there as well. And probably also good to
sign up to the text alert service, which you can
(11:45):
do through the befal Lam web page. So we've got
that up and running, and also be on the lookout
through Instagram about any of our stories to do with
a social ex mesis.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah. Absolutely. As the series continues, we've got four episodes
looking at the e f E program. Up next, I'm
going to be chatting to Becky Diamond looking deeper at
the economic and social impacts of FE and what the
program aims to achieve as well, going beyond just the overview,
Doctor Susie Keeling heard of science and research at beef
(12:15):
and lamb New Zealand. I'd heard about this program, but
I didn't understand the ins and outs of it before,
So thank you so much for taking your time to
join me today and just Dale dalve deeper into why
this program has come about and what the need is
from our Kiwi farmers. I really look forward to seeing
as I mentioned, those results, and see what our chat
(12:35):
will be like in seven years time. But thanks so
much for your time today.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Oh thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I really appreciated the chat eliminating facial Xmas impacts with
beef and lamb New Zealand powered by the Country
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