BOBBY CALVES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22775, 8 July 1937, Page 15

BOBBY CALVES

Sir,—l have received several letters from persons interested in the abo\e, inquiring what improvements hjue been made for dealing with the transport of calves for the season now commencing. "The only answer I can give is that "nothing has been done." Last year the Minister of Agriculture sent me a telegram urging that I should refrain ■ from publishing through the English press the report I submitted to him, setting out the scandalous conditions surrounding the bobby calf trade. I hold up my report, as the Minister promised to bring about considerable reforms, but what he did was so little it had no appreciable value. Throughout the whole year the S.P.C.A. has never ceased in its efforts to bring about reform before another season commenced. _ Readers may have noticed that the Minister of . Agriculture recently made the announcement that he intended calling a conference of all concerned in" the trade. The conference is duly called. After hours of words thev confess tliev have "arrived at no decision," and so the farce goes on. For myself I am weary of pleading with a Government which for the past eight years has gone on "considering the matter" and doing nothing. I am now endeavouring to do what I proposed last year, i.e., bring the matter before the English public, and I hope this may be the moans of ending this awful trade, which might have been carried on. had the Government insisted 011 humane conditions. In'my opinion, the worst feature of the trade lies in the question of transport. A few weeks ago I wrote to the Minister of Agriculture asking if the use of iron trucks would .be discontinued. (Last year we were told there were insufficient wooden trucks, but more would bo provided.) I received a letter from Mr. Lee Martin 011 which he says: "During the flush of the season the number of calves collected is 011 occasion more than can be accommodated 'in the J type of wag- | cron and the overflow is then placed fn an L or LA (iron) waggon." A few days'ago I received a letter from a gentleman in Auckland, in which he savs, "Calves are arriving in those awful" iron trucks." This is certainly not the flush of the season, so there can be 110 excuse for using these trucks. In another letter the writer tells me that at one place he found trucks loaded with calves, and he learned that they would bo in these trucks all night. The night was frosty and bitterly cold. At his own expense he procured several tarpaulins from the railway authorities and had the trucks covered. When the railways cannot carry the calves to their destination on the day they are trucked surely it should be their business to pee that they have some protection. Mv hope now is that what I have written, and shall continue to write, to the English public, will fall on sympathetic ears, and that through them relief will come. R. A. Seal.To Kowhai.