DAIRYING INDUSTRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13873, 6 October 1908, Page 6

DAIRYING INDUSTRY.

THE NEW REGULATIONS. MR. WESLEY SPRAGG'S ' VIEWS. IN the course of a letter tot Mr. F. Lawrj'i M.P., chairman of . the Agricultural Committee, concerning the dairy inspection regulations, Mr. Wesley Spragg, managing director of the. New Zealand Dairy Association, expressed his views as follows: — " I am quite in sympathy with the intention of the regulations. A system of inspection is of importance, if not of absolute necessity, for the proper furtherance of the dairy industry of the Dominion. But I am of opinion that even an important reform like this should bo undertaken with consideration fo. what it is possible' for the people affected to do, or right for any authority to expect them to ; do. The dairy, business is being carried on in the main by settlers whose requirements for carrying on their business are, as a rule, considerably in excess of their financial resources. To require people under these conditions to go to expense, even for what might bo considered necessary erections and other provisions, would be to strangle their effort to build up a settler's position. The item of cleanliness is one which has received a very great deal of attention from dairy companies' employees. They aro engaged upon a crusade against dirt from morning until, night, and from year's end to year's end. To sompel a man in the back blocks to build and concrete to, the 'satisfaction of the inspector' ..while his dwelling is of the roughest, and with an earthen floor, is art altogether unreasonable thing. I would not have cattle looked after at the expense of the children, and I do not think that the. cost of inspection should; fall upqn the farmer. I would suggest that for the present dairy regulations should, as far as the inspector is concerned, .be permissive rather than imperative. I would never dream of asking somo of the men in some of our back blocks districts, to do one hundredth part of what it appears they would be compelled to do if the present regulations com© into effect unaltered. Some of our important and reasonably well-to-do people declare that they will not work as dairymen under conditions such as arc set forth in the draft. I understand that some of them have already sold out their dairies in anticipation of what they have apparently good reason to expect . would be excessive interference on the part of inspectors, who, as I have reason to know, are not all of them either wise or considerate." ■■■-...:'.' COUNTRY PROTESTS. Our Mauku correspondent states that, at a meeting hold in the Patumahoe Hall on Saturday evening to protest against the dairy regulations being put in force . in the, district the following resolution was carried: — "That, 'as the dairy industry of New Zealand has grown and reached its present very satisfactory state by the labour and push of the farmers, without the enforcement of the Dairy Act of 1898, or the regulations made thereunder, the Government be asked to take the necessary steps'to repeal sections 6to 29 of the said Act, and to repeal or amend such other sections as are affected by the repealof sections 6to 29; to withdraw the existing regulations; and to refrain from interfering with the liberty until recently enjoyed "by the farmers, : who are now engaged/in. carrying on a successful and most important industry." Copies of the motion were forwarded to the Prime Minister, ; Leader of the Opposition, and Minister for Lands. Our Buckland correspondent states that the proposed dairy regulations have been responsible for several farmers in that district selling off their entire herds. The following petition signed by 195 dairymen has, says our Waiuku correspondent, been .forwarded to the Hoju Jl...McNa.b: — "We the undersigned dairymen of Waiuku and adjacent districts hereby enter our most emphatic protest against the proposed dairy regulations, as we consider them Unreasonable and unworkable."