The Country 19/09/24: Chris Russell talks to Jamie Mackay

Our Australian correspondent talks about the Bledisloe Cup, methane emissions and whether paraquat should be banned.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
He is our assie correspondent based out of Sydney. Great
to have an afternoon bleeders low test on Saturday, Chris,
come Saturday evening your time. No doubt you'll be crying
into your beer. Do you give yourself any chance at all?

Speaker 2 (00:15):
The only reason, I mean, realistically do is because of
Joe Schmidt. You know, he's got to somehow pull us
back from a disastrous loss against Argentina. But to talk
about peaks and troughs, but you know, I think that
he's made quite a lot of changes to the side.
One of the interesting changes is that James Slipper likes

(00:38):
to cutle is likely to be back in the side.
He's thirty five years old and for me, the most
unlikely person who overtake Georgie Greagan's record of one hundred
and thirty nine caps for Australia and also become the
sixth most capped world rugby player. So I mean, who,
He's not the blake I would have picked to do

(00:59):
that after a check in career. But nonetheless he's going
to be on the bench for this game on Saturday,
as will Tom Lioner from a family who are really
heroes of mine. Right up there with your Jeff Wilson,
my other great hero in rugby. So it's going to be. Look,
it's going to be a terrific game. We need the

(01:19):
motivation to end what's been a twenty two year bledisload drought,
with the All Blacks having been there holding the trophy
since two thousand and three. But you know, coming off
of sixty seven twenty seven lost to Argentina, it doesn't
make it sound good. I hope Joe Schmidt can pull
it out of the bag.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Well we're not going that well ourselves, but I think
I'd put the house on the All Blacks. Okay, talk
to me about this Victorian study which shows no difference
between pasture and conserved fodder in terms of methane emissions
when it's fed to dairy cows.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah, so this was an interesting study, they say, groundbreaking
just been released by the researchers doctor Paul Cheng, and
they said that the study shows that there is really
no difference in methane emissions from using pastures that have

(02:16):
been conserved as silage, hay or straw as against during
grazing pasture time. So in the winter time, we you
typically use a lot of conserved boddists down in Victoria,
particularly cereals and pastures, and their primary objective to see
how whether this made any difference the amount of enteric

(02:37):
methane that's actually produced in the atmosphere, but quality changes.
They're saying in hey did not significantly change the methone emissions.
And they're saying that while the intensities were slightly different,
the total emissions were no different. And they're comparing farms
where forty percent of the diet was was on conserved

(03:02):
fire compared to only six percent of the diet was
conserved fodder. So you know, that's encouraging. I think it
sort of meant that that there is going to be
any penalties or any consideration of that that farmers in
Victoria not penalized for the fact that they have to
use a lot of conserve finer because of their climate
down there.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Jomie, Now you want to talk about paraquat. I didn't
I thought paraquot had been banned like ages ago. Are
you still using it in Australia.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Oh, yes, we use it a lot in Australia. It's
been banned overseas quite a lot, but hasn't been banned
in Australia, and in fact, the report that came out
a couple of weeks ago from through the ABC Landline
program was that there was apparently a link between the
use of paraquat and a cluster of Parkinson's disease cases

(03:51):
in Victoria, and this was supported by some science from America. However,
the APVMA, which is the regular ating authority here for chemicals,
has misdisputed that and called on the ABC to correct
what they say is a misleading broadcast on the basis
that the trial they relied on the ABC the paraquat

(04:11):
was directly injected into the stomachs of white mice, where
if it's actually taken in through the mouth in the
normal way, there are various filter systems which will stop
the effects that they observed. Plus the amount that the
white mice were being given were far greater than anything
that would be expected providing you follow the label directions

(04:32):
for paraquat. Now, the issue here is that without paraquot,
glyphasate then becomes less valuable because the main chemical used
in Australia to kill off glyphosate or round up resistant
varieties of weeds is paraquat. So when you've used the roundup,
you get weeds that are resistant of that, and they

(04:53):
still grow. They then knock those downs with paraquot, which
is without doubt a very dangerous chemical to use. Without that,
there is nothing else really that's going to do that
to the same level or at that same cost. So therefore,
without that, the resistance to glycys say, will go up
and will end up losing that chemical as well, despite
it being cleared recently in the courts here as being

(05:15):
a cause of a likely cause of cancer. So there's
a lot of argie bargie going on about this. There
are certainly some very emotional farmers in Victoria worried about
their health and looking at the history because of this
cluster of Parkinson's down there, But it may well be
that they've drawn the wrong conclusion from an unfortunate cluster

(05:37):
of people suffering this disease.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Jamie Chris Russell, thanks for your time. Hope you get
a bonus point on Saturday at Homebush Stadium. See you
later there, mate,