ANIMAL DISEASE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 July 1938, Page 3

ANIMAL DISEASE

HEAVY LOSSES IN DOMINION (By Telegrapli—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. During the past few months, New Zealand farmers have suffered heavy losses through animal disease, said the Minister of Agriculture, the Hon W. Lee Martin, in opening the annual conference of the Royal Agricultural Society of New Zealand, in Wellington, yesterday. The recent outbreak of facial eczema in the North Island, which had particular severity in the Waikato, and the heavy sheep mortality in Canterbury, he said, had focussed attention on the greater need for investigation and instruction in live-stock management, and all were doubtless aware that plans had been completed for comprehensive researches into both these diseases. The facial eczema investigation would be the biggest single investigation ever carried out in New Zealand, but it would be money well spent. It might interest members of the conference to know, the Minister continued, that Cabinet set aside the sum of £lO,OOO for carrying out these investigations. “The object of all our animal work should be prevention rather than cure,” he proceeded, “and with the proposed increases in our veterinarian research and instructional services, we should be able to eliminate many of the troubles which are causing losses in stock at the present time. Such losses are costing the Dominion some millions of pounds annually, and the intensification of production has brought about an intensification of the problem. These losses are important factors in the raising of our farm costs, and they can be reduced only by a vigorously prosecuted programme of research by the best brains procurable. The department has already moved in this direction by improving the facilities at the Wallaceville Veterinary Laboratory, and I can assure you that the only obstacle in the way of a more rapid increase in our live-stock services is the difficulty of procuring the men capable of carrying out the work.” The sum of £20,000 was to be spent in enlarging and improving the Wallaceville laboratory, he added.

An important factor in the quality and quantity of production was that of inferior breeding stock. The standard of stock might be raised by regulatory action or by the importation of fresh blood from overseas, but more important still was .a proper genetical study of the various breeding strains in the country, and from it the standardisation of type leading toward the elimination of inferiority and the development of superiority.