Changes in Department’s Senior Staff

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume 101, Issue 2, 15 August 1960, Page 117

Changes in Department’s Senior Staff

Mr D. W. Caldwell

Appointed Chief Advisory Officer (Animal Health)

MR D. W. CALDWELL, formerly Livestock Superintendent in the Department of Agriculture at Auckland, has been appointed to a new position of Chief Advisory Officer (Animal Health) in the Department and will be stationed in Wellington. Mr Caldwell is 45 years of age. He qualified at Edinburgh as a Membei' of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in 1937. After veterinary service in the Second World War and private practice in Great Britain, Mr

Caldwell came to New Zealand in 1950 to take up an appointment as Veterinarian in the Department of Agriculture at Hamilton. In 1958 he was appointed Livestock Superintendent at Auckland, where he was in charge of the Department’s veterinary services in the northern half of the North Island. In 1954 Mr Caldwell visited Western Samoa to investigate tuberculosis in cattle there. He was a member of New Zealand’s delegation to the Bth International Grassland Congress at Reading, England, in July. As Chief Advisory Officer (Animal Health), Mr Caldwell will have charge of the Department’s programme for the improvement of animal health and of efforts to control infectious diseases of livestock other than bovine tuberculosis and will supervise the Department’s precautions against the introduction of animal diseases from overseas. Mr Caldwell’s new appointment has been necessary principally to enable

Dr S. Jamieson, who has been Chief Advisory Officer (Infectious Diseases Control) to cope with the rapid expansion of the schemes for eradicating Tb from town supply and factory supply dairy herds. These have grown into the Department’s major disease-control activity and now embrace some 60,000 dairy herds comprising about 3,000,000 animals, which are being tested by 225 veterinarians. The technical and administrative work of supervising testing and the coordination and progress of the schemes will be undertaken by Dr Jamieson as Chief Advisory Officer (Tuberculosis Control).

Appointed Assistant Fields Superintendent at Dunedin

Mr G. L. BANFIELD, Farm Advisory Officer, Department of Agriculture, Thames, has been promoted to Assistant Fields Superintendent in the Department at Dunedin. He succeeds Mr A. Stuart, who has been appointed Fields Superintendent at Palmerston North. Mr Banfield is 42 years old. He has a B.Agr.Sc. degree and joined the Department in 1946 as an Instructor in Agriculture at Hamilton after five years’ service in the R.N.Z.N.V.R. Mr Banfield transferred to Thames in 1947. Apart from his general advisory work in the Thames district, Mr Banfield has made an important contribution to the solving of weed control problems in the Hauraki Plains, particularly in wet pastures and in drainage systems. He has also done important work on hill country improvement on the Coromandel Peninsula.

Retired after 35 Years’ Service to Government and Fruitgrowing Industry

MR A. R. GRAINGER, Horticultural Superintendent in the Department of Agriculture, at Christchurch, retired at the end of June after 35 years’ service to the Government and the New Zealand fruitgrowing, industry. For the past five years he had been in charge of all the Department’s horticultural advisory and inspection work in Canterbury and Otago. Mr Grainger joined the Department of Agriculture in 1926 as an Assistant

Orchard Instructor at Hastings after service in the First World War and a period as a private orchardist. In 1934 he was promoted to Orchard Instructor at Tauranga and while he was there the dreaded citrus canker was discovered in citrus orchards in the district. Tracking down the infection and eradicating it were major tasks for Mr Grainger and the Department. After periods at Mapua and Christchurch, Mr Grainger was appointed Fruit Standardisation Officer in the Department’s head office in Wellington in 1947. His work was concerned with the overhauling and bringing up to date of the numerous regulations and grading standards which covered the horticultural industry. Mr Grainger became responsible for maintaining a nationwide uniform standard of grading for fruit for export. Mr Grainger was promoted to Horticultural Superintendent at Christchurch in 1956.