HYDATID CONTROL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27388, 13 May 1950, Page 4

HYDATID CONTROL

Government Action Urged

INERTIA AMONGST FARMERS A great deal of investigation has been made recently by the directors of the Experimental Irrigation Farm at Awamoko into the incidence of hydatids in this country. Furnished with information from the Department of Internal Affairs, the Government Statistician, and the Medical School of the University of Otago, Dunedin, the directors are urging the New Zealand Meat Board to make recommendations to the Government departments concerned in an effort to secure some action to overcome this national menace. The directors in their last annual report brought forward an original proposal that a deduction should be made for each infected lamb carcass, these deductions to be made by freezing works and paid into> a S e oo ral veterinary service fund. The duectors submitted that the quickest and most effective way to arouse interest and action in any individual in a far from perfect community, was to hit ms Docket, and hit it hard. In their representations to the Meat Board, the directors forwarded the following arresting statement from the Me School’s report: My committee, faced with failure of its publicity campaigns and the inertia of the farming community has felt tnat it can do little more. It has provided basic information on arecoline dosing and the destruction of the parasite in offal. It seems there are two measures which should be applied simultaneously in a renewed attempt to eradicate hydatids. One is a propaganda campaign by the Department of Agriculture, and the other is the imposition of a financial penalty on infected carcasses. A bonus on a clean carcass is futile. The directors endorsed this observation, and supplied to the Meat Board the following figures from official sources: Dogs registered, 115,1)00 in the North Island. 62,000 in the South Island: arecoline issued to local authorities, 1.250,000 tablets annually, valued at £5500. As the chairman of the Microbiological Research Committee pointed out this was proving almost valueless because of the inertia and lack of co-operation amongst farmers.