A Coming Meat Famine.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 284, 10 December 1901, Page 3

A Coming Meat Famine.

The invitation of tonders by the War Office for tho supply of moat in rfouth Africa receives additional signficance from the news that comes from that part of the world of an impending meat famine. On September 18th a Capetown correspondent wrote to a London paper that exhaustive enquiries in high official quarters convinced him that at tho present rate the available live stock would not hold out more than a very few weeks longer. For this the war is primarily and chiefly responsible. Earlier in the war, tho correspondent remarks, tho military authorities kept and herded all or most of the sheep and cattle captured from tho enemy, reserving the stock for the use of the army, aud so supplying the troops when in camp and on tho march with fresh beef and mutton. This necessitated tho employment of a large number of men, while the extent of country in barren districts required for the pasturage of enormous flocks of sheep and herds of cattle was so great that tho Boers often came into their own again by the process of l’ecapture. Tho stock had also to bo shifted occasionally to keep within touch of the army, and this impeded tho mobility of tho troops. After a time captured sheep and cattle were abandoned after a day or two, and this explains a matter about which some wonderment has been expressed—the extraordinarily large captures of live stock made by the British. If all those had been added together they would bo found, it is said, to form a total greater than all tho cattle and sheep in South Africa. The mystery is explained by the assertion that they were often captured over and over again by successive columns. Latterly, howevor, the authorities, with tho intention of preventing the Boers getting supplies, have ordered the destruction of all captured stock, and this policy, which has meant that a column capturing 15,000 sheep has slaughtered them all on the veldt, has largely denuded the country of its fresh meat supply, and its breeding stock. Many of the animals so slaughtered are in shockingly poor condition, and the soldiers havo not cared to [eat the meat, except in the absence of anything else. Rinderpest is also making its appearance, and though tho military cattle tho draught oxen —are tho chief victims, tho disease is no respeetov of owners. Tho famine in meat may not be so eloso at hand as the correspondent fears, but that there will before long be a scarcity of it can hardly be doubted.