Dog food ‘not from N.Z.’

Press, 23 July 1987, Page 3

Dog food ‘not from N.Z.’

By

TONY SMITH

in Nelson

Dog sausage eaten by crewmen in Soviet trawlers did not come from New Zealand, said a Russian defector in Nelson yesterday. Mr Vitaly Sinilo, a former first mate and assistant political officer of the Soviet fishing vessel Lesogorsk, said the dog sausage incident happened while crews were working near Peru six years ago.

Mr Sinilo, who jumped ship at Dunedin last year and now works in a fish-

ing boat based at Port Nelson, has alleged that the money saved from buying dog sausages instead of normal produce was spent on luxury items for the Soviet Deputy Minister of Fisheries, Nikolai Ivanovych Lysenko. Mr Sinilo made the assertion in a letter sent to a newspaper in his home town on the island of Sakhalin, in response to an article which accused him of being a “drunkard and a man who holds nothing dear.” He said that nowhere in the letter, which was tran-

slated for the “Nelson Evening Mail” by Mr John Goodliffe, a lecturer in Russian at the University of Canterbury, did he say that the dog sausage had come from New Zealand. Mr Sinilo said he wished to clarify any misunderstanding that might have arisen from a report in “The Press” yesterday in which a Lyttelton provider, Mr Brian McSherry, said that dog sausage had not been supplied by his company, which services all Russian trawlers that visit the

South Island.

Speaking through an interpreter, Mr Sinilo said, "My letter was quite clear. This incident (the dog sausage incident) happened in Peru six years ago.” He said food and supplies provided by New Zealand companies to Russian ships were always of high quality. Mr Sinilo said the Russian crews who ate the dog sausage did not know they were eating pet food. “We just thought it was foreign food.”