FARM-KILLED PIGS.

Southland Times, Issue 23001, 22 September 1936, Page 5

FARM-KILLED PIGS.

To the Editor. Sir, —If Mr Hastings and his friend from the North Island read that correspondence signed “Wake Up and Clean Up,” they would smile, for they have got Invercargill going now. Is bacon any worse to-day than it was 20 years ago? Well, it might be for I used to get Watty King to kill hundreds of pigs for me at Gap Road, up to 16 and 20 pigs at a time, to go to Green Island, and Watty told me that I hold the record for I never had one condemned. Then a lot of inferior bacon came down from the North Island to attract the like of “Wake Up and Clean Up.” Bacon went down and I sold good weaners in Winton at 2/- each. I had 13 of the best sows that you would see anywhere— Devon and White York. My health broke down with 160 pigs on hand with no demand. Mr R. Russell gave me a cheque for £4 at the Winton sale for eight big sows unseen. Some went to Arrowtown. In a fortnight I was cleaned out and have never owned a pig since, so you see that I know how to feed a pig. What beats me is this—how the butchers in Invercargill will stand this sort of thing. I take the remarks made to the reporter as propaganda for the North Island Pig Association to monopolize the pig industry. Then “Wake Up and Clean Up” will have to pay for bacon and good enough for him. Tell me, Mr Editor, is this correspondent’s or your lives in town any more valuable than ours in the country towns, for we cannot get any of our meat inspected and yet we have the Plunket Society and we are still alive. Does “Wake Up” know what sort of water he drinks or what sort of water his beer is made of? Our poor soldiers at the front didn’t worry if their horse flesh was inspected or not. Neither do my people at home know that the cows whence our dairy produce comes are not all inspected, but this I do know, that “Wake Up” should not cast slurs on the struggling farmer who