asked the Minister for Agriculture if he has any figures in respect of the quantity of food consumed by a pig to produce a cwt. dead weight of pork for bacon where 75 per cent. of such food is composed of potatoes and the balance made up of either compound meal or maize meal and skim milk.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Pig Production Costings.
I would refer the Deputy to the article in my Department's Journal, Volume 35, No. 1, page 58, where the Deputy will find an exhaustive report of experimental work on this very matter.
asked the Minister for Agriculture if he has any figures of the cost of fire and labour and the risk of loss and interest on capital, involved in the production of pigs for bacon, on a ration composed of potatoes, by small farmers and cottage tenants who feed one or two pigs at a time.
The answer is no. As the Deputy is, no doubt, aware, a ration composed of potatoes only would not be satisfactory.
Can the Minister say if his Department has any figures to contradict those which I gave for costings on the adjournment debate on the 9th instant and, if he has, will he say in what particular the figures I gave were wrong?
I deprecate the suggestion that any statistics of my Department would contradict any statement of the Deputy and if the Deputy wishes to know what the views of my Department are in respect of the matter on which he gave his views, he will find them at the reference which I mentioned in answer to his previous question.
Does the Minister say that he can put up any figure to contradict the figures given by me?
I have volumes of the Department's publication here dating back to 1909 and I would say that the costings for those years bear no relation to present day costings.
The reference which I furnished to Deputy O'Reilly to-day relates to the Journal of January, 1938, and he will find the article which I invite him to peruse on page 58 and the following pages, where every article of diet derived from the commodities to which he referred is dealt with and the experiments consequent on their user in the rearing and fattening of pigs, and these represent the views of the Department of Agriculture at the present time.