TUBERCULOSIS IN MILK.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 218, 15 September 1925, Page 5

TUBERCULOSIS IN MILK.

AN ALARMING STATEMENT. HEALTH DEPARTMENT'S REPLY, NOT JUSTIFIED BY TESTS. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) PALMERSTON" Is., this day. At a recent meeting of the Paimerston North Borough Council, Councillor A. J. Graham brought forward the matter of tuberculosis in milk, and made a suggestion that the Agricultural Department should be approached with the object of having cows tested for that disease, and especially cows producing milk for domestic use and food for babies and young children. Independent inquiries into the position, it was stated, had revealed an extraordinary state of affairs as regards tuberculosis in cattle in New Zealand. The country, said the speaker, could not afford to make a test compulsory for two reasons—(l) That the disease w so prevalent that compensation payable under the Act would mean too. heavy a drain on the finances of the country; and (2) that heavy slaughter of cattle would seriously diminish the quantity of butter aud cheese exported frorii the Dominion, and. as a natural corollary, the wealth of the people; also, that even were all tubercular animals in the country destroyed there would be no guarantee that stock would be free from the disease in the years following—in fact, if the experiment of Belgium could be taken as an example, tuberculosis in cattle would be just as rampant again not many years after a crusade against it.