Uphill Fight For Animal Research

Press, Volume C, Issue 29638, 7 October 1961, Page 6

Uphill Fight For Animal Research

TN the provision of facilities x for animal research Can, terbury seems to have missed out in recent years, and there seems to be a danger that even while the Department of Agriculture is in the hands of a Canterbury farmer this position is likely to be perpetuated. Mr Hayman's contention in the House of Representatives this week that many of the stock problems of this province are common to other parts of the country and »re already being examined by existing research centres is a matter on which many people will take issue with the Minister. 111-thrift of sheep, still the major stock problem of this part of the country and one of which the Minister has had personal experience on his South Canterbury property, is a very different disease in Canterbury to that in the North Island True, workers from the north have made excursions Into the South Island to conduct trials, but this must remain a poor alternative to a station centred in the South Island concentrating on South bland problems. The Minister himself, at the opening of the Lincoln College farmers' conference this year, paid tribute to the work Khat Lincoln workers had

done in demonstrating the usefulness of selenium and mentioned that it had been by chance listening to a broadcast of a paper given at an earlier conference that he had requested his veterinarian to conduct a trial with selenium on his farm with the result that it had been shown to be a highly useful tool in promoting lamb thrift and also woo! growth there.

Thai Lincoln was able to make a contribution to knowledge of selenium is the more creditable because its funds and resources for research are limited and it is primarily concerned with teaching. Admittedly his department is now providing money for work at the college which may help to unravel the mystery of ill-thrift, but this does not mean that the province with the second largest sheep population in the country is getting its fair share of animal research.

Mr A. C. Wright president of North Canterbury Federated Farmers, said this week that the main reason for siting a station in Canterbury was Hut all the present stations in high rainfall

areas. There was a real need for a station to look into the problems of the drier lands extending from Central Otago, along the east coast of the South Island, and even including perhaps part of the east coast, of the North Island. This need was long overdue in being met, he said As has often been said before, Canterbury is uniquely placed to be the site of animal research. It has diversity of country from the mountain tops to the plains with light medium and heavy land and diversity of sheep and cattle breeds. * Little time should be lost in taking up the Minister’s challenge to prove to him that there is a special need for the establishment of an animal research centre at Lincoln.

While paying lip service to the desirability of there being another research centre in the South Island, the former Minister of Agriculture (Mr Skinner) indicated that under Labour the South Island could presumably expect only a diagnostic station at some distant date after one had first been established in North Auckland—a not very reassuring situation.