DEFEATING THE EMBARGO

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19373, 10 July 1937, Page 5

DEFEATING THE EMBARGO

STUD MERINO SHEEP FLOCKS FROM AUSTRALIA NEW ZEALAND DENIAL (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. That there is any possibility of Australian stud Merino sheep which are imported into New Zealand finding their way into other countries against which Australia has an embargo was emphatically denied by Mr. S. T. Richmond, the President of the Marlborough Merino Breeders’ Association, in an interview yesterday.

Mr. Richmond was referring to the cable message from Sydney stating that the opinion had been expressed at the last annual conference of the Graziers’' Association of New South Wales that the effectiveness of the embargo on the export of Merino sheep from Australia was endangered by the sale of sheep to New Zealand.

“I can give a guarantee that not one sheep imported : from Australia to New Zealand has ever been .re-exported -to South, Africa or to any .other country,” said Mr. Richmond. “We give a bond to the Australian Government that we will 1 use the sheep only in our own studs.” South African Advance Apart from Australia there was only one country which had made any mark in the fine-wool trade and that was South Africa. Stud Merino sheep from New Zealand, however, would not be good enough to satisfy the breeders of past importations from Australia in South Africa, where, as a result, the studs had reached a high state of perfection. Referring to the suggestion of a writer in a Sydney paper that it might be desirable for the Commonwealth Government to prohibit the export of sheep to New Zealand, Mr. Richmond said that this would be disastrous for New Zealand breeders. “Our studs are so extremely small that it has been, and will continue to be, impossible to maintain them in any satisfactory state without continuous importations from Australia,” he said. “Australia has nothing to fear from New Zealand and we hope that our Government will continue to cooperate with us in seeing that an embargo is not imposed.”

MINISTER’S OPINION CANBERRA SUPPORT (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. The denial of the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. W. Lee Martfn, that Australia’s embargo on the Jexport of Merinos is endangered by the sale of sheep to New Zealand is supported by a statement by the acting-Prime Minister, Dr. Earle Page, who said: “Suggestions that Australian Merinos are being re-exported from New Zealand have been investigated and disproved.