NO CONTAMINATION

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 132, 1 December 1938, Page 17

NO CONTAMINATION

FACIAL ECZEMA IN STOCK

An assurance that as soon as any definite results were, available regarding the Government's investigations into facial eczema that they would be made available for the guidance of the farming community generally was given by the Minister of Agriculture (the Hon. W. L. Martin) in an interview last evening. He said the Government had allocated a large sum for conducting the most comprehensive single investigation ever carried out in New Zealand }nto a live stock disease. A large team Of scientific workers with the co-opera-' tion of members .of the farming community was working on the problem of so-called facial eczema in stock.

"I have observed reports to the effect that the recent outbreak of the disease in the stock was contagious, contaminating meat sold for human consumption," said the Minister. "This belief has no foundation in fact, as all authorities in all countries where the disease has been studied are agreed that it is not contagious. Experiments conducted in the Dominion and other countries have proved conclusively that the disease is not transmissible from animal to animal, nor from animal to the human being.

"In order to avoid the possibility of affected meat being placed on the local or export market, the Department meat inspectors stationed at all freezing works and abattoirs were instructed to carry out a most rigid inspection of carcasses and the success of this inspection can be gauged when it was shown that not a single complaint has been received of affected meat being offered for sale to the public."