DAIRY REGULATION

New Zealand Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 3736, 10 May 1899, Page 7

DAIRY REGULATION

A CONFERENCE AND A BRISK DEBATE. I COUNTRY VERSUS TOWN. A FARMER ATTACKS THE EXPERTS. THF7 MAYOR HOLDS OUT A THREAT. A meeting of the Dairy Regulation Committee was held at the City Council Chamber yesterday : morning. Present—Messrs J. B. Blair (Mayor of Wellington), chairman, Lingard, Crawford, ‘Webb, Cook, Brown, Mothes, Ward, Aplin, and Fraser. Mr Gilruth, Government Veterinarian, was also present. . ' The Mayor explained that a previous meeting called to adopt (or otherwise) the new Government Dairy Bill had been adjourned for the purpose of enabling Mr Gilruth to be present, to give the committee the benefit of his knowledge on a number of points about which there had arisen differences of opinion.' i ! ' , Mr Gilruth said he had intimated on a former occasion that he did not think’ the dairies serving the Wellington district were properly inspected,; and-, ho,- was of the same opinion still. He had said before, and he repeated again, that he did not think the cost of inspection would be greater under the Agricultural Department than it was now. The department proposed to take over the inspection, and if he' was not mistaken the reports which their experts submitted . would be available to the Dairy Regulation Committee. The Mayon said on a previous occasion Mr Gilruth said the present system of inspection was inefficient, and that gave' rise to- the statement- that some of the cattle supplying milk to Wellington were in a diseased condition. ' ’' ■ Mr Gilruth mentioned cases which had been brought under, i his notice by the ■owners <th!emjselves,--in which cattle had been suffering from tuberculosis, and quoted from Mr Reakes’s report to the department last year,, taking exception to the insanitary condition of many of the cowyards; in the - district. In a case' which had come under his personal notice, he Said, three children in one family had boon attacked by tuberculosis, only accountable for by the fact that they had drunk the milk of a diseased cow; while a. - fourth child in the same family, which had refused to take milk was not attacked. These things coming under his notice from time to time led him to the conclusion that reform was needed! in their present methods of inspection. Their present Inspector no doubt did his best, but in his (Mr Gilruth’s) opinion he was-not qualified. No man was qualified unless he; had had a proper training. No insurance company would accept the information of a layman in relation to life risks, and this committee should not do so in a matter which affected the health of the whole' community.

> Mr Lingard; Have you any reason ■to think that the cattle in this district are in any better condition than they were in March last, when Mr Eeakes made his report?. Mr ' Gilruth said they ought V to he, considering the number of cattle ■ that had been slaughtered. : in the Hutt valley in consequence , of . the 'inspection of one of the Inspectors of the department A great many; however, had not been tested, because no application had been made to have them tested, and there was no power to force a test on farmers who did not wish it. « Mr Lingard: DcKyou -.think .it advisable that the Inspector should be dependent on this committee or not? Mr Gilruth: That id hardly ■ h, question for me to settle.- > • • i;i ; • The Chairman: You are placing Mr Gilruth in a false 1 position! ;1 ' ' Mr Gilruth! agreed that it was placing him in a false position. Any other man could judge as 'to that as well as he could. His own private opinion was that if the Dairies*Act were brought into force the department would be able to ; administer. it, far hotter than anv local committee. , -, ‘ ; Mr Fraser said as a representative of the City of Wellington, knowing the great necessity there was for having the milk pure, and being aware that the Act of last sessi&ri gave great facilities for inspection, ho would move—- “ That, the application , made from this committee on a previous occasion that the Government should "undertake the work oft inspection i he adhered to.” He thought they should 1 have* 1 the advantage of the best advice and scientific skill. The people assembled ■ in ' the city in a great mass were supplied by the farmers of .the.country. Oftentimes the farmers were not aware that their cattle were,diseased, and,at present the townspeople had. no means of securing inspection. They would have the power if the committee endorsed what it had agreed to before^—that the Government should do the> inspecting. The country members:seemed to object to the proposal ’ on the' ground that the expense of the new system would ho greater than the . old ’ one. He was ouite' certain! from what -he heard, that ;that: would not- be materially, so. - He was sure-the farmers themselves would be • only too- glad tor' get' the best advice that could be got. ■ ' Mr Ward said he was much obliged to Mr Gilruth for his explanation, but there was a good 'deal' in his statements that he (the sneaker) would like to ouestion. Mr Gilruth wished them to believe that there’ was a : great danger to the, .co.ranupiity from tuberculosis in dfeeisStP cattld, hut how could ! he, acbouilt, fori the fact that, according to insurance 'statistics, farmers were as a class the most healthy people in the community? Farmers were not hereditary farmers—they were recruited from all classes—and yet they were proverbially healthy. How was that? He (the speaker) had been a farmer nearly all his life, and he had never heard of half-a-dozen cases of

farmers dying of consumption, which was literally tuberculosis. He (Mr Ward) very much doubted the efficacy of tuberculin as an infallible detective of disease. Indeed, it was very questionable whether it did not disseminate rather than assist to stop it. Take Mr Gilruth’s own report. He (Mr Ward) believed it stated that there bad been a great increase of tuberculosis since 1891 in Europe. How did he account for that ? Would it hot be reasonable to infer that it had arisen through inoculation, as the result of this test ? It was a known fact that the Chief Inspector of Stock in Queensland had publicly stated that three parts of the tuberculosis in that colony had arisen owing to inoculation for pleuro. The speaker then went on to quote an English doctor’s statement as to the unreliability of tuberculin, and the latter’s opinion that if more attention was paid to child life in the slums than to the milk supply better results would be arrived at. This brought him to the point of the contributory negligence of the townspeople. He quoted instances which had come under his own particular notice where contamination had come from sewer gas, owing to connections having been made in private houses. This, he said, would account for the spread of disease to . a far greater extent than the carelessness of the farmers. The Dairy Regulations strained at a gnat in refusing to allow the farmers to connect their premises with open drains, but they swallowed a camel when they permitted the town dwellers to connect their premises with the sewers. The Chairman: The people of Wellington have spent £200,000 to get rid of that kind of thing. Mr Ward went on to say that, like the lawyers, Mr Gilruth had left, a loophole for escape when ,he said he did not think the expense would be any greater under the new order of things than under the old. He noticed that he would not commit himself to an absolute statement that the expense would not:' be greater. The farmers knew very well that they would not be able to get a: veterinarian to ■!o the work for the same money as Mr Collier. The latter was no friend ex his" as he had considered him too r fcrict sometimes in making him do things which he considered) unneces:sary; but the farmers generally admitted that under- Mr Collier’s inspection matters had been greatly improved. These dairy regulations were made *for the purpose of throwing black mud at the farmers, and that they were not necessary was shown by the fact that the farmers who were amongst the disease, if it existed, all the time .were the most healthy people, in the community. Mr Eraser: Parsons; are'mor© healthy than farmers, and they go into all sort's of holes. .

Mr Lingard said! he could speak with, authority, , and say ■ that farmers’ lives were no better than those of any other section of the community. v 1 ' The Chairman :■ Every application for life insurance is r judged on its individual‘merits. . ,

Mr Ward repeated that the farmers were the; most healthy section of . the community, with the exception Mr Fraser had mentioned, and market gardeners. He would- stake* the ‘whole Controversy, on - that issue. He (Mr Ward) sometimes drank nothink else but milk, and' his family drank 'more than’ they sold, but they never boiled it. .-.He had never had his cattle tested, and he didn’t intend to; yet he could : ' sell more . milk than he could produce. There was no public demand for inspection. The Chairman *aid ' this was a case like many'others in which people must be protected ’ .from tthcmsclvcjs, and reform must - come from without.

Mr. Gilruth said they had. to admit that Some of the people : in the towns were of dirty habits, but that hardly entered into the. 1 question they were discussing.'...' Admitting 'that, farmers were a very healthy section of the com-' munity—-and jh(e did po—was it not principally owing to their surroundings? Why, the very treatment recommended for consumptives nowadays was ■to get tjiem away into the country to live on the' farms, so that they could have the- benefit of the pure air. Mr Ward and ho . could absorb a good _ many germs of- tuberculosis, and their systems would throw them off, but - it was different with little children-; —- ■ Mr Ward : ' There axe small children on farms' man! ■ ; . ’ Mr Gilruth: Yos, blit there are good healthy conditions there, blit I have seen deaths of chidron, many of them in the country, from tuberculosis, both here andin the Old Country. People in the country had good healthy systems and a good tone; people in the towns were more susceptible to disease because of their surroundings. It surprised him when he caine to New Zealand to find that the peojple here, even in this good climate, were as subject to tuberculosis as in.any other country. That: was why it was. so necessary to keep up the inspection, which was as much in the interest of the farmers as of the townspeople. It was necessary to the’ safety ’ of, the farmers 1 herds that all tuberculous beasts should be killed off. In reference to the reliability of tuberculin, it must be remembered that it was sterilized before use by the application of heat thirty degrees above boiling point under pressure. If there was any. germ that would stand that, he was not aware of it. Mr Ward : Was it not distinctly stated through the public press that a doctor in Sydney had said that a case had come under his notice in which a number of cattle had died of tuberculosis within two years of being treated with tuberculin ? Mr Gilruth said there was no evidence to show’ whether tuberculous beasts had not been introduced amongst the herd in the meantime.

Mr Brown : Is it proposed to have the whole time of the expert to look after the cows- in this district? Also, what will the salary of the veterinary surgeon •come to ? ■ ' *

Mr Gilruth thought they might get the services of a veterinary for £3OO, with cost of locomotion additional. If the department were conducting the inspection, they could put another man on in the event of the necessity of the district inspector being called off to another place. Mr Brown-: Then they want, to swamp the country with inspectors. . The Chairman: Well, we have the inspectors. It is no good doing the thing, and not doing it well.

Mr Brown: Would this district have to pay two inspectors, one to direct and the other carry out the directions?

The Chairman supposed that the cost of inspection would fall on the districts whence the supply came. Mr Brown asked what the cost of each inspector’s locomotion would probably be.

The Chairman said about £2OO if he went all over the country. £SOO would be the outside limit of expenses. This inspection would principally be in the interests of the farmers. Sir Ward had spoken about the carelessness of townspeople in regard to sanitation. To show the earnestness of the people of Wellington in this respect, they had spent £200,000 publicly, and £IOO,OOO would probably ne spent privately to put these very matters on a proper footing. Did - the farmers think if, they raised,the impression that they were not prepared to put the food supply of the city on a proper footing, that Wellington was going co submit to it? That was why he asked them to earnestly discuss this question, not to raise these feelings, because he was satisfied that if the farmers were not prepared to approach this question in a reasonable spirit, regulations would be

made by the City Council on behalf of the people that no milk should be sold except from registered dairies, under strict supervision and under conditions very much more irksome to the suppliers than those contained in this Bill. Only that morning he had discussed the whole guestion with Dr Martin, theHcai.h Cffi cer, and he was of opinion that all that was sought to be obtained by the Bill was right and proper, and if the Bill was adopted it w’ould pave the way to a better state of things: and if not, a series of regulations would be brought down in the direction he had indicated. Mr Crawford said Wellington was being supplied with milk "from a very large district indeed. They might be surprised to hear that a man from Featherston had lately been going about Wellington and asking the retail men to take milk from him at a very low price. Now they knew absolutely nothing about the dairies from which this milk would come. Another matter which would possibly astonish the meeting was that a man was going about Wellington now like a fisherman calling out milk at an absurd price. Milk came down from the Manawatu line and was distributed in Wellington. What hold had we got on these people? Being a dairyman himself, with a lob of cows, he was very careful to watch his herd, and if one of them showed signs of disease he' had it killed at once, in the interest of the remainder. Diseased cows were too dangerous for him to keep about. That was why he thought everybody supplying milk should be registered and be placed under strict supervision. The • retail trade was interfered with, too, by people who kept two or three cows, which came in at a certain time of the year, and the milk from which was dispensed to the people of the neighbourhood at any price at all. These people were under no supervision, but were at a distinct advantage over those who took trouble with their stock to keep them clean, provide winter food for them, and keep them free from disease. He heard on very good authority the other day of a vendor who 'augmented his milk supply at the same time that he gave his horse a drink from one of the city water troughs early one morning. That was probably the way in which a number of vendors augmented their supplies, though it was to be hoped that the majority chose less tainted sources. It was essential that they should have competent inspectors to examine their herds, and that all people supplying Wellington should be charged a heavy license, and be kept under strict supervision.

Mr Ward: I agree with a license, but not a heavy one. Mr Crawford'said nearly every grocer in the suburbs of Wellington was; dealing with milk at the present time without fee or license. The chairman said if the new Act came into force the Government would have to administer , one portion of it and the City Council the other—the Government would provide the experts and the City Council’s officer would have tof see that there were no abuses amongst the vendors. Mr Mothes said the Petone. Council had decided tc support the Government, Considering the present arrangements very satisfactory.

Mr Lingard agreed that the Government Department should administer the Act, and that its officers shotdd be competent veterinaries, as a little knowledge in this, as in other matters, was a dangerous thing. Mr Webb said thei local bodies objected to the taking the control out of their_ hands. He had been instructed’ by the Melrose Council to oppose this Bill. ... Mr Ward moved an amendment to the effect that there was no necessity for an amendment of the present system, as the public was already sufficiently protected. : The‘'amendment was lost on division on ■ the casting vote of the chairman. Ayes: Messrs Webb, ' Cook, Brown, Ward, Apelih. Noes: The chairman and Messrs Crawford, Mothes, Fraser and Lingard. _ V Mr Fraser’s motion in (favour of adopting the provisions of the Bill was lost by four votes to six. Ayes: The chairman and Messrs Fraser, Lingard and Mothes. Noes: Messrs Craw-; ford, Webb, Cook, Brown, Ward and Apclin. A vote of thanks to Mr Gilruth terminated the proceedings.