Dust Chokes Cattle To Death

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30576, 20 October 1964, Page 17

Dust Chokes Cattle To Death

(N.Z. Press Assoclatton—Copyright) CANBERRA, October 19. Large numbers of cattle are being choked to death by dust on their way to market over Northern Territory special beef roads, the Sydney “Sun” reported today.

A special report is being i made to the Federal Govern- i ment on a rapid deterioration in the roads—a Commonwealth “prestige” project. One Northern Territory 1 meatworks estimated that i about 15 per cent of its cattle '

died in the fantastic dust palls stirred up on the roads, the “Sun” said. The report details rising maintenance costs and the extreme hazards to cattle and road safety by dust clouds. The report, made by the

Works Department, urges early bitumen sealing of the beef roads to avoid costly major repair works. An account of the dust-suffocation of cattle was given to a meeting of the parliamentary public works committee in Canberra last Friday. 15 p.c. Loss

Mr A. M. Richardson, acting director of lands in the Northern Territory administration, told the committee: “The amount of dust stirred up by transport has to be seen to be believed. “It hangs along the road for half-an-hour after a transport has passed."

A Katherine meatworks told him the works lost about 15 per cent of its cattle through death in the transports over the last season, Mr Richardson said. “A post-mortem examination on the killing floor showed there was a high concentration of dust in the beasts," he said. “It is a reasonable assumption that a large proportion of that 15 per cent was caused by dust suffocation. “Most deaths occurred towards the end of the cattle, -.rain units," Mr Richardson said.