IMPORTATION OF BLOOD STOCK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22022, 3 August 1933, Page 10

IMPORTATION OF BLOOD STOCK

NEW ZEALAND’S EMBARGO ADDRESS BY GOVERNOR-GENERAL. (Per United Press Association.) HASTINGS, August 2. “New Zealand is the only country in the world that maintains an embargo against the importation of bloodstock from the United Kingdom,” said his Excellency the Governor-General, during an address to a gathering of farmers at Hastings this afternoon, “ and in the meantime countries such as Australia, whence no embargo is enforced, are buying the best British stud stock, improving their herds and beating us for our markets.” To a most interested meeting his Excellency elaborated the following points. The New Zealand fanner looks upon a pig as a garbage-eating animal, whereas the farmers in all other countries treat it and diet it with respect for its market-winning potentialities. New Zealanders breed the wrong sort of pig, and have no regard for the taste of the British housewife. We treat England as though it were an evil scene of widespread foot-and-mouth disease, whereas the United States and New Zealand are the only countries that have less of it. We look upon foot-and-mouth disease as though it were some dire affliction of stock, whereas it is only a sort of cold and is easily curable. We have great opportunities to establish a profitable export trade in chilled beef, but we are breeding entirely the wrong sort of cattle. New Zealand is potentially the greatest agricultural and pastoral country in the world, but does not realise it. And, lastly, the qnbta dispute will not matter eventually, for England even now cannot prodiK-i even half the primary products she needs.