GRIM TRADE IN VEAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 121, 12 August 1927, Page 8

GRIM TRADE IN VEAL

THE Minister of Agriculture assured an interviewer in Wellington the other day that there is a great opportunity for New Zealand to develop a lucrative trade in the export of veal to the United Kingdom. It is probable that this market would yield to Dominion dairymen not less than £ 100,000 a year and possibly rather more if the trade be handled with scrupulous care. It has to be noted that the Hon. O. J. Hawken has laid parJieular emphasis on the profits side of the business, but has walked warily in the circumstances which may hold a great deal of loss. These circumstances are the methods of developing the trade for profit. The Minister said very little about the disagreeable character of the slaughter of immature calves for veal export shipments. As THE SUN’S special investigator noted last week, dairy farmers and slaughtermen admit fear that the success of the new industry will be menaced by the muster of immature and illnourished calves. It was stated then and it has not yet been denied that thousands of calves were being prepared for export which not one New Zealand farmer in a hundred would allow within sight of his own table. Now, as the Minister of Agriculture must know, better than anybody else, the British authorities insist upon this condition in the veal trade: “All calves must not be less than three days old when killed and must have been properly fed and nourished from birth.” It cannot be claimed by the Minister or by any of his departmental officials that such conditions so far have been scrupulously observed. We need not repeat again the harrowing details of the slaughter, but may emphasise that careful and unprejudiced observation revealed the lamentable fact that a considerable proportion of the calves slaughtered recently in the Waikato were both immature and ill-nourished: so much so, indeed, that their plight in going to the slaughter made even the hardened butchers shudder.

The Minister says naively that he cannot understand how that condition has come about because all the departmental officers had been instructed to see that the calves were not under three days old and that all were well and sufficiently nourished. It cannot be argued that the New Zealand dairymen do not need the £IOO,OOO in sight, but if they are to secure it, it must be earned with perfect compliance with the very generous conditions stipulated by the British authorities.