STOCK IMPROVEMENT BILL.

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 8 November 1933, Page 4

STOCK IMPROVEMENT BILL.

It is greatly to be regretted that the South Taranaki executive of the Farmers’ Union, at its meeting on Monday, did not consider the Stock Improvement Bill worthy of full discussion .and support After ft brief debate it was decided by a large majority not be support this measure, which aims at the elimination of the scrub bull. Opposition to the Stock Improvement Bill is equivalent to a desire for protection for mongrel stock and a-s long as that is the position it remains open -for our critics to declare that this country has a long way to travel before it can lay claim to world leadership in dairying. Despite the opposition of the local union executive, it is probable that this Bill, or something very like it, will go- through the House. The adoption of the measure wou'ld be a good advertisement for New Zealand dairying, just a-s its rejection would be a poor one. Doubtless it will come as something of a shock to many people outside the industry to learn that there is a need for such a Bill. The outsider who has heard something about herd-testing, calf-marking and butter-fat records has probably assumed that every dairyman pays attention in some degree or other to breeding. Such, unhappily, is not the case. There are many farmers who would like to have a good bull at the head of their grade herds and cannot afford the cost, hut there are still too many others who do not trouble about this aspect of dairy farming. The cost factor can be overcome here as it is in other countries, as was pointed out by Mr G. H. Buckeridge’iS article in yesterday’s show supplement: In America farmers combine their resources to form co-opera-tive bull societies. This system was advocated in Taranaki forty years ago, but so far it has failed to find favour, but the introduction of legislation prohibiting the sale of scrub bulls may cause | New Zealand to give more active thougiit to such a scheme in the not very distant future. The absence of 00-oporative bull -societies Is not, however, any argument against the Bill to come before the House tliis session and it is to be hoped that the measure will receive the fullest consideration from dairymen, in whose interests it has been introduced.