STOCK EMBARGO

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXX, Issue 12200, 12 March 1934, Page 2

STOCK EMBARGO

PLEA FOR. ITS REMOVAL

LORD BLEDISLOE’S FURTHER

appeal.

Discussing at New Plymouth the animals which would be- of greatest use to New Zealand . -dairy-farmers, Lord Bledisloe .isaid the type of animal most useful was beef cattle capable now that it had been found scientifically practicable to export chilled- meat in. prime condition from New Zealand to England (and if- bad to be remembered that Lonodon. with its 7.,000,000, lived on it to the extent of 85 per cent.) —of producing the fast maturing “baby beef”, tender and tasteful, which the pampered British housewife demanded and for which she was prepared to pay at least 60 per cent more than f°r the frozen article.

There is no country in the world better fitted to supply this new demand at great financial advantage than New; Zealand, said Lord Bledisloe, but nine-tenths of our present grazing beef cattle are unsuitable to the trade. Their main function is as scavengers employed to eat roughage and improve your hillside pasture for . sheep. Australia is about to secure. or at least is alert to secure this trade for herself, and is importing from Britain the very best type of Polled Angus, beef Shorthorn, and Hereford for the purpose. New Zealand in this important development, as in that of improving dairy cattle and pigs, is sadly handicapped by ari wholly unfounded dread of foot and mouth disease, and the continuous embargo (which she alone in the world imposes upon the importation of British pedigree stock. There is not the smallest risk of importing foot-and-mouth disease into this country from Great Britain through the medium of any live animal. It comes a little hard on the ordinary commercial farmer who is not •a rich man that he cannot improve his herd or his flock by obtaining a really good male animal without having to pay ot least twice its purchase price through its unnecessary detention in some other country en route to New Zealand.

The maximum period of incubation by which an infected animal will develop foot-and-mouth disease is 13 days. The voyage here from Britain takes at least five weeks.

There was no country in Europe so free from foot-and-mouth disease as Great Britain, said his Excellency, and there was none where such drastic measures were taken to suppress it when occasionally it appeared, and thus largely because of its great export trade in pedigree stock. Curiously enough, it was these drastic measures, which evoked such a feeling of confidence and security in other countries, which aroused unfounded apprehension in New Zealand. It had never yet been proved that any live animal had ever carried foot-and-mouth disease from Great Britain to any other country, and yet Britain had had by far the largest export trade in pedigree sock of every description in the world. When New Zealand was first stocked with sheep and cattle from Great Britain, foot-and-mouth disease ‘was seriously prevalent in England. There was no quarantine station, but even then no such disease entered the country. Now disease seldom ocurred. Britain’s feav outbreaks were drastically circumscribed and suppressed, and the country baa the most efficient quarantine system m the Empire. Even Canada, the only Dominion reachable from England within the period of incubation of the disease, had now decreed that all British stock which had passed through the British quarantine station should now; henceforward be freel imported without any restriction.

“New Zealand cannot afford any longer not to import pedigree animals direct -from Britain, and thus to improve her stock, as all her rivals are doing.’’ concluded his Excellency. *