Feeding of garbage to pigs ‘should be banned’

Press, 14 February 1981, Page 3

Feeding of garbage to pigs ‘should be banned’

By PETER COMER The feeding of processed; garbage to pigs should be! banned, according to the" president of the Temuka PigImprovement Club, Mr Noel; Dennison. . I Mr Dennison is.convinced l , that whatever the disease! found on Mr John Dennis’s pig farm near Winchesterproves to be, it is Enked to their garbage diet. “If garbage feeding was, banned, the Ministry of Agriculture could pretty well forget about foot-and-mouth; in pigs,” said Mr Dennison. He said that any exoticj animal disease had to be ! brought into New Zealand somehow, and garbage feeding brought the danger of taking contaminated food or. to farms. "I feel sorry for Mr Dennis, but because he is a garbage feeder the news did not surprise me,” Mr Dennison said. “If he had been an allmeal feeder like myself and most pig farmers, I would have been surprised and really worried. I don’t believe it is foot-and-mouth, but I think that it is something associated with garbage feed.” Mrt Dennis has said that his slaughtered pigs had been fed mainly on scraps, most of which came from hotels and restaurants. The food was processed in cookers which were inspect’d regularly by the Ministry of Agriculture. Mr Dennison said that Mr Dennis had spoken to him on Tuesday about the costs and methods of meal-feed-ing. “He is very careful and conscientious, and he cooks the stuff well, but garbage feeding is inefficient and dangerous.” “The Ministry can check things as thoroughly as it likes, but it cannot control the feed between the restaurant and the cooker. Anything could happen in this time,” he said

The Ministry believes that, cooking any garbage at the temperatures and times laid down in the regulations 1 would certainly kill viruses, including foot-and-mouth. • Mr Dennison has his own : theory about how 28 of MrL Dennis’s pigs got the blis-| tering on their snouts and)I Trotters which led to the 1 destruction of more than 700 i others. He believes that the < pen might have been given ■ feed which was still too hot, I and, pigs being pigs, they plunged into it, burning 1 themselves. His theory has j not been discounted by the • Ministry. 1 “It was treated right from 1 the start as a potential out- I break of foot-and-mouth, and 1 even if it is not a vesicular I disease it will have been a 1 marvellous exercise for the 1 Ministry and everybody else concerned,!’ said Mr Denni- 1 son. < No symptoms have been < found on the other 10 pig > farms in the area whichare 1 licensed to feed garbage. i The Timaru Harbour 1 Board was reluctant to com- i ment yesterday on sugges- I

tions that the slaughtered ; pigs may have eaten diseased garbage from foreign I ships berthed at the port. 1 “I have no idea. I would ;not like to comment at this stage,” said the board’s general manager, Mr B. E. C. Strathern. Mr Strathern said that the board did have a modern and efficient disposal unit to ; handle garbage from visiting : ships, some of which could ibe in port for some time ! The unit was run in acc>rd- ; ance with tight regulations, and under the supervision ol I the Ministry of Agriculture. ■ The suggestion The pigs I might have eaten diseased 'meat from overseas vessels I came from a former advisibry officer to the Pork. JnIdustry Council, Mr L. D. lEddy, of Temuka. Pig farmers who used garbage as feed for their stock were in a minority, especial- ; in the South Island, and the [ practice was strictly regu- ; fated, said the chief executive of the Pork Industry Council, Mr D. Dobson, yesterday, reports the Press jAssn. .p I “All garbage is required to Ibe cooked at very high temperatures, and producers i using this method of feeding are registered, and their activities policed by Ministry staff,” Mr Dobson said. He wished to emphasise that the ban on pork sales imposed in Timaru on Thursday had not been imposed becuase of a threat to human health. On the contrary, the measure had been aimed at preventing scraps being recycled back to other pig farms in. collected garbage. “The question of human health was obviously a vital one,” said Mr Dobson, “but even in a worst case, diagnosis of the present problem, with the samples showing positive foot-and-mouth, people would still not be at risk, as this disease is not transmissible to humans.”