Dairy cows are being wrongly accused of polluting waterways when the real culprits are birds, farmers say.
They told the Federated Farmers annual conference in Auckland yesterday that game birds - particularly Canadian geese - did more to foul some waterways than their herds.
But that was notto the liking of first-time invitees to the conference, Fish and Game, which accused farmers of failing to clean up their act over effluent.
The Crown body, representing trout fishermen and duck hunters, has been a vocal critic of farm effluent being released into waterways.
Fish and Game chairman Rob Roney said that while the dairy industry was moving in the right direction on stemming faecal pollution of waterways, more needed to be done and that the time for self-regulation was over.
"The industry itself - Fonterra particularly - have introduced initiatives that are heading in the right direction for us - what we're just not so sure of is whether they [the farmers] will actually take notice of them on a voluntary basis," he said.
"We are saying is it's been going on for too long. There are streams that we can no longer fish. They've had enough time [and] we would like to speed that process up."
While Mr Roney accepted bird droppings could render pasture unpalatable to grazing cows, he insisted that was an isolated issue dwarfed by the pollution attributed to cows.
"In the big scheme of things, compared with the size of a herd of cows, it's absolutely insignificant."
Frank Brenmuhl, who heads the Federated Farmers dairy section, said he was sick of dairying being blamed for all water pollution and that Fish and Game members did not have to consider sustainability. "Nobody else accepts any responsibility for it."
He said e-coli contamination in Lake Ellesmere and other water bodies in Canterbury was not caused by livestock but by waterfowl.
"The run-off from cows is virtually zero into waters in particular in Canterbury and the input from birds is 100 per cent."
