OPINION: Last week 4500 dairy heifers were loaded onto a ship docked in Napier, for export to China.
A chorus of criticism came from animal welfare organisations, from opposition politicians, with Winston Peters calling it «economic treason», and even disapproval from some farmers themselves, presumably those who hadn’t sold stock that were leaving on the ship.
The punishment for treason used to be death by hanging and is now life imprisonment, so I’m a bit reluctant to admit that we ourselves have sold animals for export over the last few years. But yes we have, and, sorry, but there’s no regrets from me.
The main criticism is that we are shooting ourselves in the foot, selling off our best genetics to our competition, that we should only sell our dairy products to China and not sell them the stock that will supposedly allow them to become self-sufficient. Comparisons were made to New Zealand selling off kiwifruit plants in the 1970s to Italy and South America, and what a «disaster» that was.
When will we ever learn?
There seems to be this idea that we are the heavyweights of international dairying, that we have the best cows, the best methods and that countries like China buy our products because they don’t know how to do it themselves and they don’t have the cows to do it.
Well, sorry, but that’s not quite right. While it is true that we dominate the world export market, that is because most dairy is consumed in the country that it is produced in. We may make up 40 per cent of world exports, but in terms of overall world production we are at around 2 per cent. We are not that significant.
New Zealand has 6 million of the world’s 271 million dairy cows. So we make up just 2 per cent of the world’s dairy cow population. China already has 15 million cows.
If we somehow managed to refuse to sell any animals to China, it wouldn’t make a scrap of difference. It can, and does, buy animals from all around the world. Australia, for example, exports almost as many dairy heifers to China as New Zealand does, despite having 1.6 million cows.
Even if China couldn’t source stock from anywhere in the world, there are so many other options to increase its herd numbers. Artificial insemination, using sexed semen to produce all-female calves and flushing donor cows to do embryo transfers are some technologies that are readily available to build numbers.
I’m also not sure whether the critics understand how a free trade agreement works. We can’t say to China, yes ,we are happy to trade with you without barriers or tariffs for all of our products. Oh, hang on, except for cows. We won’t sell you cows, even if you are offering a good price.
We can’t have our yoghurt and eat it too. A free trade agreement means just that.
There’s also criticism that we are selling off our best genetics. That’s not the case on our farm. We kept the best calves ourselves and sold the bottom end for export. I suspect everyone else who sold calves did the same.
China is more interested in seeing cattle that have the right markings rather than what their genetics are. We sold calves that we simply wouldn’t keep ourselves.
Of course, then there are the animal rights groups that seem to want to criticise everything we do. According to them, conditions on the ship are appalling and the heifers are going to a terrible life in China. Ironic, considering they already tell us our animals have a terrible life on farms in New Zealand. Also ironic given that surplus calves sold for export mean fewer calves sent for slaughter as bobbies. You’d think they would want to support that.
The fact is, the ships are purpose-built for exporting stock, there are vets and stockmen on board and the heifers are well looked after. Heifers often arrive in better condition and heavier than when they left.
And by the time they arrive in China they have had a lot of money invested in them, purchased as calves, reared and grazed in New Zealand and shipped to China. It’s an expensive business, making the heifers very valuable, so it wouldn’t make sense to then mistreat them when they arrive in China – abused cows don’t produce milk.
So will China eventually have enough cows of its own to not need our dairy products? I don’t know for sure but I seriously doubt it. But if that did happen, I don’t think me refusing to sell calves that are destined to be exported would have made any difference to the outcome at all.
Source: Stuff
Link: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/opinion/89158042/marc-gascoigne-no-regrets-for-selling-calves-to-china