Reducing stock effluent on the roads requires a collaborative effort between farmers, stock truck companies, meatworks, saleyards and local authorities.
It is encouraging to see Environment Southland and the Road Transport Association trying to improve matters by insisting that farmers complete declarations that show cattle have been off green feed for at least 12 hours before being transported, with the warning that if this is not done stock owners could be liable for the costs of cleaning up any discharge on public roads while their animals are being transported.
But it is less than satisfactory, if understandable, to learn Federated Farmers is telling Southland dairy farmers not to sign the forms because stock owners have no control over the load once it is on the truck.
Stock effluent on our roads is a national problem and one of long-standing.
Like so many of the negative effects of our pastoral farming industry, this also is one where the blame, the repair and the redress are constantly being shunted around the guilty parties while nothing gets done.
Only relatively recently have formal measures been required to deal with it.
By the mid-1990s, those involved were sufficiently moved by public outrage, the damage to roads, and the obvious road safety issues, to begin to organise a response.
A Road Controlling Authorities forum in 1997 established a committee to devise an industry code of practice to minimise the discharge of stock effluent.
Lincoln University also published guidelines for users, such as road transport firms, farmers and stock agents.
Road transport operators began fitting holding tanks to stock trucks (but not by any means all stock trucks), and roadside effluent disposal sites began to be built here and there, but not universally.
Probably no-one involved a decade ago anticipated that, by 2008, a massive shift in farming practices from sheep to dairy cattle would take place, and that this would make the problem both more visible and, at times, far worse.
At this time of the year more dairy stock is being moved between farms during the annual farm changeover and this potentially creates a worse problem with stock effluent as a traffic hazard, because it can make road surfaces very slippery in wet conditions, apart from the unpleasant effects for cyclists and motorists from effluent splattered on to vehicles and persons.
Farmers have, at a minimum, a duty to the rest of the country to adhere to the voluntary code and best industry practice by standing stock off grass for at least four and preferably 12 hours before moving them by truck.
But stock agents and livestock transport firms can also assist by giving clients plenty of notice of pick-up times.
The meat companies and sale yards can help, too, by having effluent disposal facilities at their sites.
In Otago, the Otago Regional Council has effluent disposal sites regularly located along State Highway 1 from Pukeuri south to Clinton, with another at Raes Junction at the intersection of SH8 and SH90.
It also has established a "pollution hotline" for road users to report effluent spills.
Its response to the problem has been exemplary.
Environment Southland, on the other hand, has done very little, having no permanent effluent disposal sites although it claims to be working with Transit New Zealand to establish a network.
It relies on the private disposal systems of two trucking companies in the Lumsden area.
That is not good enough, and the farmers have a legitimate grievance; if they see the local body to whom they pay serious money doing little or nothing about a problem requiring action, why should they alone get the blame?But that does not mean everyone should just sit on their hands while a serious public nuisance continues.
The example of an infringement notice and fine recently being earned by one transport firm for twice spilling effluent in Invercargill - believed to be the first such punitive action anywhere in the country - speaks volumes about the "head-in-the-sand" attitude long adopted by all parties.
When the carrot is ignored, the stick must be applied.
Given commercial realities, why is not every single instance of offending now being prosecuted? The closest surveillance throughout this month everywhere in the South, backed up by solid fines, would soon see a change in attitude by everyone.
