Cost of Sheep Inspection.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 208, 25 June 1887, Page 4

Cost of Sheep Inspection.

The Hawlctfs Bay Herald draws attention to the relative co3t of sheep inspection in the different provincial districts during the past year as shown in the Sheep Department returns. Our contemporary quotes figurea to show that while the sheep rates collected in the Canterbury aud Hawke's Bay districts were respectively £4,705 and £2,946, in Auckland the amount of rates collected ~was only £279, and in Nelson £139, yet it seems that while only five inspectors were employed in Canterbury at a cost of £1,925, and four in Hawke's Bay at a cost- of £1,040, in Auckland eight inspectors were employed costing £1,500, while Nelson had three inspectors costing £750. The respective number of sheep in these several districts is as follows : Canterbury, 4,704,000 ; Hawke's Bay, 2,805,133 ; Auckland, 279,021 ; Nelson, 138,957. Upon these acts the two first named districts are alleged to have been ecurvil treated by the department, and the Herald remarks : " Why Auckland should require so many inspectors is a mystery." Well wo agree with our contemporary in thinking eight inspectors a greater number than was necessary for the Auckland district, and the department have now, we believe, dispensed with some of this inspectorial power. At the same time we think the Herald is arguing on a mistaken line when it assumes that the number of inspectors allotted to a district should be proportionate to the number of sheep therein. The number of separate flocks has much more to do with the question than the aggregate number Of sheep. The object of having inspectors is to detect and stamp out disease, not only in the interests of a particular district, but for the sake of the »heep owning interests throughout the whole colony. The article we are referring to stigmatises as a great absurdity the appointment of inspectors at New Plymouth" and Westland, because the two districts between them only number 18,500 sheep. But scab may get amongst a few thousand sheep just as easily as amongst a million, and from them be scattered all over the country, Efficient inspection in eaoh distriot, whatever the number of sheep

it contains, is almost equally in the interes of every flock owner as it is in his own immediate neighbourhood. And if the 279,021 sheep of Auckland are scattered over a wide extent of country and broken Tip into numerous small flouks, the expense of inspection per head must be proportionately greater. The piinciple should be that over the whole colony the inspection work should bear a fair proportion to the expenditure, keeping in view due efficiency.