GAME FOR SALE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 285, 14 September 1935, Page 7

GAME FOR SALE

OFFENCE BY POULTERER. PHEASANTS IN A SHOP. (Per Press Association.) \yELLINGTON } September 13. “The society does not press for a heavy penalty. It merely wants to nip in the bud any growth of what appears to be T,he practice in Christchurch,” said counsel for the Wellington Acclimatisation Society (Mr G. G. G. Watson), in the Magistrate's Court to-day, when proceedings were taken by the society against Edward John Beresford, a poulterer, for exposing for sale imported game. He was convicted) and ordered to pay costs by Mr E. D. Mosley, S.M.

Mr Watson said that the information was laid under Section 40 of the Animals Protection and Game Act, 192122,' which stated, inter alia, that a person committed an offence if without lawful authority he sold or exposed for sale, or had in his possession, any absolutely protected animal or any imported or native game. Defendant, a poulterer, exposed in his shop window for sale eight pheasants. Defendant claimed, genuinely or erroneously, to have acted with statutory authority. He relied on Section 33 of the Act, which provided that nothing in the Act prevented' the owner of any animal which had been lawfully taken from keeping it in confinement or in a domesticated state, or from offering it for sale.

The defendant claimed that the birds were raised in captivity, and that he had 1 bought them from a Christchurch dealer, who, in turn, had bought them from someone who had raised them in captivity. Section 16 of the Act gave statutory authority for the issue of licenses to approved people to sell imported or native game, but for the last 20 or 30 years the authorities and the society had set their faces against the issue of licenses, as it had opened the door to wholesale fraud. “This is the only occasion over many years that pheasants or game lias been seen offered for sale in Wellington,” said Mr Watson. In evidence, Beresford said that he had 1 it on authority that the Canterbury Acclimatisation Society had sold a pair of. pheasants to a local 1 fishmonger last week. In a telephone conversation with i a Christchurch fishmonger who had offered him some pheasants he had been told that they were being sold quite openly in Christchurch. , The magistrate said that he had been in Christchurch for about 20 years, but had never seen pheasants even exposed in a shop, although he had seen plenty of ducks.