Fed Farmers president has heart attack at fence-building contest

Federated Farmers president Charlie Pedersen is in Palmerston North hospital's coronary care unit after suffering a heart attack on Saturday.

Mr Pedersen, 50, was taken the hospital and put under observation on Saturday evening after competing in a celebrity fence-building competition at the Central Districts field days near Feilding.

Mr Pedersen said today he expected to make a quick recovery.

"The staff at Palmerston Hospital are great except that they won't let me have my cellphones," he said.

Fed Farmers' vice president Don Nicolson and other board members will be filling in for Mr Pedersen until he returns to work.

Mr Pedersen has interests in several farms, including a dairy farm at Himatangi, 24km southwest of Palmerston North.

Mr Pedersen attracted national attention last year when he claimed environmental causes had been lifted to a religious status in New Zealand, and that environmentalism threatened to reduce the brightest and hardest-working people to the level of the ordinary and the uninspired.

- NZPA

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