The monopoly on dairy herd testing in New Zealand has ended after 50 years.
Hamilton-based Ambreed has become a certified dairy herd tester, the first to get a licence issued under the revised Dairy Industry Act.
The company will now compete against Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC), which has over 500 full-time staff
and 1200 seasonal workers.
It provides artificial insemination, herd testing and advice to farmers, who each spend an average of $5000 a year with the corporation.
LIC also provides the only herd recording service to dairy farmers, Management Information for Dairy Animals (Minda), and a herd testing service, originally licensed by the Dairy Board.
The herd testing market is estimated to be worth more than $17 million a year.
Ambreed chief executive Graham Bowen said the company had already signed up 850 herds.
There were 14,000 New Zealand herds and more than 10,000 were tested annually. Ambreed has taken on 25 extra staff to cope with demand.
The LIC database was the largest bank of dairy herd genetic and management data in the world, holding historical data on 14.2 million cows and sires.
About 93 per cent, or over 3 million cows, of the country's dairy herd was monitored and developed using this data.
LIC owns and operates the database, drawn from herd testing, mating, and calving records kept by farmers. But the issue of access to it as an "industry good" has become controversial. The Dairy Industry Restructure Act gave LIC custodianship of the intellectual property contained on the index, despite submissions that it was an industry-good asset and should be held by the industry good organisation Dairy Insight.
Ambreed has alleged LIC was unfairly blocking access to the index by charging farmers using Ambreed as herd testers for the calculation of the breeding values and breeding worth indexes.
An industry database access panel was now looking at the issue.
- NZPA
