IMPORTING STOCK FROM AUSTRALIA

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 100, 21 January 1918, Page 8

IMPORTING STOCK FROM AUSTRALIA

A BREEDER'S COMPLAINT. (By- Telegraph—Special Correspondent.) Hawera, January 19. A matter of considerable importance to breeders and the Agricultural Department was introduced at a meeting of the Taratm-i JVAenutive of the Farmers' Union by Mr. .Mills, »f ']claora, who reminded the meeting of the regulations in force prohibiting the

3 in:j,ort3tiou of cat'.'e horn Australia, I and thnt in consequence of this regur lation breeders had refrained from , purchasing. cattle in Australia. This regulation had been in force for a considerable tinfb. Recently, however, they would have noticed in their daily papers reference to the fact that the Department of Agriculture had arranged with the Department in Australia to ! import a number of cattle from them. 1 Now this, seemed an extraordinary procedure in face .of the s Government's own regulation, and ho presumed they ' -would not impose these restrictions un- , less there was some real necessity for them or some real danger of introducing the tick or ox bot. The Agricultural Department could do no more with the cattlo they imported in tho " "way of quarantine or precautions' than they could with cattle that any private individual might import, and he (Mr. Mills) could see no excuse for the Agricultural Department making this regulation and then proceeding to break it themselves. It could not even be said that they had imported more good stock into the Dominion than private breeders had. ■ Ho knew of some lines wherein hreeders were inclined to sneer at the Department's efforts in that direction, and they wero certainly not the only people capable nf importing stock that would improve the herds in thfc Dominion. Whni excuse the

Agricultural Department could make for their present action' it was difficult to say. Breeder* hod f»lt it a hardship not being able tn import stock From Australia, but they had not expressed any resentment, believing that the regulation was made in tlio. interests of. breeders. ■Fe moved .that tho executive, through the Dominion Executive, enter an emphatic protest against the action of the Department of Agriculture in this matter. Tin's was seconded and carried unanimously.