DAIRY REGULATIONS.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12428, 22 August 1933, Page 2

DAIRY REGULATIONS.

A SPLIT IN THE RANKS. FROM SPECIAL DAIRY COMMITTEE. LETTER TO MINISTER. Mr P. O. Veale, 8.A., M.Sc., A.i.C., research chemist, Hawera, has addressed the following letter to the Hon. C. E. Macmillan, Minister for Agriculture : “Dear Sir, —I desire to place in your hands my resignation from tlie Special Dairy Committee appointed in your rooms on March 7th. I take this step for the reason that, although this committee was set up ‘to confer with and advise the department’ in the matter of the new regulations, there lias been no proper consultation with the committee at all, but, on the contrary, a strong indication by you and your department that you will not be guided by advice of any kind, particularly scientific. Under tlie circumstances’ I tender my resignation, not only because the process of ‘consulting’ tlie committee after the regulations have been framed lias been a farce, but also because I do not desire to share in any endorsement of the contentious sections of these dairy regulations. At the same time the impression is prevalent that the committee * has had some hand in the framing of them. The general public may therefore hardly believe tlie fact that the committee knew of the regulations only by hearsay, and that the members were not even handed a copy of them by your department during the time they were supposed to be considering them. In order that the facts shall be known, I am handing copies of this letter to the Press. “As you will recall a largely attended meeting of chosen representatives of every section of the cheese industry was held in your rooms at Wellington on March 7tli. Some plain speaking was indulged in, and the Dairy Board presented demands for certain reforms, including new regulations to cover compulsory milk grading with differential payments, registration of factory managers, and prohibition of changing of suppliers during a dairying season. These demands you undertook to give effect to, and a committee was set up from amongst those present ‘to confer with and advise tlie department’ regarding how best to implement the board’s demands by way of regulations, and to advance the quality of New Zealand dairy produce generally. “It is a fact that your department ignored the spirit of this action by next proceeding on its own initiative- to re-cast tlie whole of tlie New Zealand Dairy Regulations ail'd to introduce contentious matter relating to detailed methods of milk grading and payment without even consulting the committee, and finally, after a meeting of the committee, to gazette the regulations as law in tlie face of united opposition of the scientific and manufacturing representatives on that committee to certain definite sections. “The most serious aspect is the fact that you and your department refuse to be guided, in a. scientific matter, by tlie scientists of New Zealand, particularly those of Massey College and tlie Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Y'ou are a law unto yourselves and apparently possess the power to bind the dairy producers of this Dominion with'your opinions. Your chief dairy officer (himself not a scientist) lias had tlie effrontery to declare that he ‘does not accept’ the results of the experiments of the Dairy Research Institute at Massey College. Finally, when a motion aiming at giving effect to the emphatic recommendations of the research scientists is proposed, your department records a block vote of four votes (including your own) against the proposal. By this means you transform a. favourable extradepartmental vote of seven to three into an equal division of seven oil each side, and then, by the aid of a totally unauthorised casting vote by yourself as chairman, you reject the advice offered to you, and declare the motion lost. Can you, sir, indicate by what authority you and your department took to yourselves the largest representation and voting strength on the committee? Can you deny my suggestion that some of you had no real standing on the committee at all? Can you indicate under what common law right your own casting vote was warranted? And can you justify these actions by yourself and your officers as those of a Minister and his department ‘conferring with’ and being ‘advised by’ a committee? “The dairying public of Now Zealand are entitled to know that they support at considerable expense a research institute and sundry laboratories which conduct well-planned research, and a Department ot Agriculture (Dairy Division) which ‘does not accept’ that research ; that they maintain scientists to investigate problems and make recommendaions, and Dairy Division officers (not themselves scientists) who refuse to be guided by tliose recommendations and that the regulations governing the grading of milk for cheese-making are not endorsed by the scientists of New Zealand, nor by the published opinion of overseas authorities of any standing The dairy industry is further entitled to know that the insistence of your department upon two tests in milk grading is merely because, for appearance sake, you refuse to ‘back down’ after the totally unreasonable stand which the chief of your Dairy Division once took in trying to make the obsolete curd test the one and only official method of grading milk * in New Zealand. You feel that you cannot ‘show weakness’ and ‘let hjm down’ at this stage by giving effect to the recommendations of scientists, lest this indicate too plainly that your officer was wrong. So, in order to ‘save his face’ the dairy industry is being forced to waste * its money by buying highly expensive ‘curd

testing machines’ which, in a few years, will join the junk heai> along with standardising equipment, waxing machines, and other monuments to unteachable officialdom. “These matters, Sir, have been continually pointed out to you and your officers in the four meetings of the committee and sub-committee which I have attended. Regret has been expressed by us over and o?er again that you saw fit to frame the regulations without consulting tlie committee, and that you have decided, not only to oppose science in the methods of grading, hut also to • have no regard to the convenience of the industry, by imposing cumbrous and complicated systems of payment which will promote nothing but friction, and aie totally unnecessary. “We know, of course, that the New Zealand dairy industry has made wonderful strides in tlie past under the guidance of Hie Dairy Division without any material assistance from science. That, however, is no justification for your depa rt meat's regarding science as an interloper in tlie sphere in ithas reigned supreme for so long, and for creating unrest in the industry by continually opposing' the facts of science by the uninformed opinions of so-called ‘practical' men. ’ ’—Y ours f aitlif ullv, P. O. VEALE, 8.A., M.Sc., A.I.C. Research Chemist, Hawera.