Foot and Mouth Disease

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 70, 15 December 1933, Page 13

Foot and Mouth Disease

Sir, —In answer to “Nuff Sed's” letter in “The Dominion” of December 7, I should like to state that my sole object in writing on the importation of live stock is to broadcast the knowledge that there is no danger in importing live animals from Great Britain, and to claim the right of those who choose to go to that expense to have the embargo lifted. I am definitely relinquishing farming in. February next and so have no direct interest in the matter.

Some of “Nuff Sed’s” statements seem to be rather wild. There are, no doubt, many herd proprietors who would like some imported blood and have a wider knowledge than “Nuff Sed” 1 evidently possesses. Outbreaks of foot and mouth disease are fairly frequent in G-reat Britain, but not more so I think than fifty years ago. What has caused so much' commotion in New Zealand is that the Agricultural Department decided a few years ago that the best way to check the disease was to order the slaughtering of all the animals on a farm, immediately an outbreak occurred. In most cases only a very small number have time to develop the complaint before this is carried out.

It is an erroneous idea that the disease if it should ever reach New Zealand would spread like wildfire through the country. I remember two outbreaks on my father's farm years apart; not onequarter of the precautions were taken that are now insisted upon, and the trouble was confined to the paddocks in which the .outbreak started. The statement that the Jersey breed “for nearly a thousand years lived and were inbred on these isolated islands” would require some proof; some cattle from Holland and elsewhere were introduced in comparatively recent years. What we do know is that most of the high-priced bulls sold in recent years in New Zealand are prettv full of imported blood. • Our herds and flocks are comparatively only in their infancy, whilst i Great Britain they have been building some of them up for hundreds of years and have paid far more attention to culling and feeding than is common in New Zealand, consequently the animals have far stronger constitutions. Fortunately the Australians are more alive to the importance of a change of blood than many people in New Zealand and quite a valuable export trade is developing with that country for our stock. There are many useful breeds of both cattle and sheep that have never been introduced to New Zealand, and if some people have their way, never will be. When we have been breeding for another hundred years or so, it will be quite soon enough to think of doing without fresh blood.—l am, etc., F. J. ELLIS. Bulls, Dec. 11.