Cattle import proposal

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32564, 25 March 1971, Page 2

Cattle import proposal

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 24. The Department of Agriculture had not made a decision on a new scheme for importing cattle from Tasmania, the Director of Animal Health (Dr S. Jamieson) said today.

He was commenting on a statement by Tasmania’s State Minister for Agriculture (Mr W. Beattie) that Tasmania was on the verge of achieving a new scheme for exporting cattle to New Zealand.

In his statement Mr Beattie said his department had suggested that cattle be exported after a short quarantine in Tasmania and without a further quarantine in New Zealand. He believed that the New Zealand Department of Agriculture was “sympathetic” to the proposal, but that quarantine legislation in New Zealand prevented the scheme’s immediate introduction.

Dr Jamieson said he was at a loss to understand why Mr Beattie had made the statement

The Minister had presumed more than was intended. Officials had been corresponding about cattle movement between New Zealand and Tasmania for nine months, but had not considered amending the legislation. “We have simply had correspondence on ways of moving cattle more quickly than at present,” Dr Jamieson said.

New Zealand farmers were facing delays of a» long as two years between selecting cattle and seeing them on their farms, he said. This was because of the difficulty of synchronising quarantine periods in Tasmania and New Zeeland with

the limited shipping links between the two countries.

No decision on the proposal would be made until the matter had been discussed with the Australia and New Zealand Animal Quarantine Committee in June or July, Dr Jamieson said.