Government Talks On Live Cattle Exports

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28540, 20 March 1958, Page 10

Government Talks On Live Cattle Exports

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 19. The Government and the Meat Board are now holding discussions on the proposed deal involving the shipment of 6000 head of beef cattle to the United States, the Minister of Agriculture (Mr Skinner) said today. w ’ Asked to comment on the proposal Mr Skinner said: “I do not like the principle. All our raw materials should be processed to the last possible stage before they are exported and sold.”

Mr Skinner said he could see no harm in a trial shipment of cattle. In the present instance, only bullocks which would be fattened in the United States would be shipped. The deal involved no breeding stock.

But, he did feel that cattle men in the United States might not look on the importation with favour. Indeed, if the scheme was carried too far it could jeopardise the present trade in meat cuts with North America. Mr Skinner said that so far as he was concerned as Minister of Agriculture he had no power

whatever to ban the export of healthy stock from New Zealand, though the Minister of Customs could bring down an export prohibition order provided there were “very, very sound reasons’’ for doing so.

When the proposed export of cattle to the United States was referred to him last Friday, Mr Skinner said the first trial shipment would be given Government approval subject to the issue of health certificates to meet United States quarantine requirements.

The deal could result in the earning of perhaps 750,000 dollars, he said and from the first results of the shipment it would be possible to examine the implications of “this type of dollar earning.”