CORRESPONDENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 March 1922, Page 7

CORRESPONDENCE.

A MENACE TO TARANAKI.

(To the Editor.) Sir,—l note in a recent report the arrival from Waikato of a mob of bulls for a local freezing works, some two hundred in number. Now what does this mean to the dairy farmer in Taranaki? Firstly, I should think there was an over-supply of this commodity locally, when the best price offering is five shillings per cut. Of course I am perfectly aware that private enterprise has a very free‘ field, and a free country to operate in, and this aspect of the matter is entirely in the farmers’ own hands. But the more serious aspect of the matter for the whole province is the menace to our cattle caused by bulls being driven from one district to another. no one is responsible to make sure that these bulls are absolutely clean and come from clean districts. In a recent Auckland Weekly, I saw a very free report of a lecture given by Mr. S. Burton, M.R.C.V.S., Government Veterinary Surgeon, dealing largely with the dread disease (sepsis), and incidentally mentioning that in one district between .300 and 400 cows had actually died, and then the fearful toll that abortion takes from the dairy farmer. I have never seen the figures quoted for New Zealand, but one of the Australian States is credited with losing £300,000 per year, and we know that the bull is the chief factor in carrying the disease, and lastly, we see almost every week the strenuous fight the East Coast settlers are putting up to stay the tick in its apparently nonstop run down that coast, is a district, one of the best in the world for the farmer, containing some of the best cattle in the world. Don’t the records show this? And probably one of the cleanest in health, and yet not one single effort is made to safeguard this grand heritage. We will richly deserve all that is coming to us.—l am, etc.,

W. J. FREETH Pukearuhe* March 17.