Poultry Hatcheries Bill, 1947—Committee Stage.

Sections 1 and 2 agreed to.

SECTION 3.

Sir John Keane

I move amendment No. 1:—

In line 34, page 2, to delete the words "and pheasants".

The purpose of this amendment is to delete pheasants from the category of poultry. In ordinary daily life, I have never heard a pheasant classed as poultry and I cannot see any purpose in it. I do not know of any pheasant hatcheries, but there might be some rich man who preserves game and wants to hatch some pheasants' eggs artificially. It seems to me ridiculous that he should have to get authority from the Minister to do that. The Minister may have some other explanation and, if so, the House would like to hear it.

Minister for Agriculture (Mr. Smith)

My information is that pheasants' eggs are hatched very often in poultry hatcheries and that a disease, which is known to be a very fatal disease in poultry, can be carried by pheasants. That is why they are included in this definition.

Sir John Keane

I still do not quite understand it. If there is a disease and the owner is stupid enough to spread it, it is only confined to his own pheasants. First of all, the pheasant has to be diseased — I take it that that is the starting point. I understand they are subject to a certain disease.

Mr. Baxter

What disease has the Minister in mind?

Mr. Smith

B.W.D.

Sir John Keane

The pheasant hatches and the disease is transferred only to other pheasants. After all, that is only a very limited degree of harm and confined to the owner of private game; and we should trust him not to spread the disease, in his own interest. I do not see how it is going to affect poultry, but the Minister may have some technical explanation.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Is the amendment being pressed?

Sir John Keane

I do not want to divide the House but I think that the Minister's explanation is very unsatisfactory.

Mr. S. O'Donovan

The disease B.W.D., or Bacillary White Diarrhoea, is caused by the same organisms in pheasants, ducks, geese or any other poultry. We want to get rid of the disease and there is no use in getting rid of it in one bird if another can propagate it. I do not suppose we will reach a stage quickly where we will have mass artificial hatcheries of pheasants, but we must have control, since the disease can be transferred through a pheasant's egg or any egg. We are taking control in the case of guinea fowl. We have not very many guinea fowl at present, but we are trying to control a disease that is common to several types of poultry and it is only reasonable that you include every bird possible. For that matter, we may find that partridges—I could not answer that — and some other birds' eggs may be carriers. In the interests of the community and the nation, we want to control the disease as far as possible.

Sir John Keane

I am still unconvinced, but there are other amendments which are more important. Speaking entirely without any statistical information, I should think that far more poultry are hatched by the ordinary method of the hen than by the artificial method. This disease is going to go on in the case of the ordinary fashion, the hen sitting on the egg; and in order to control the artificial form of egg-hatching all this regulation is far too high-geared and far too complete and does not allow sufficient intelligent exceptions.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Sections 3 to 6, inclusive, agreed to.

SECTION 7.

Question proposed: "That Section 7 stand part of the Bill."

Mr. Baxter

Would the Minister tell us what is in his mind in regard to fees? What is his idea of the amount to be paid for a licence?

Mr. Smith

We have to fix this with other interested Departments. I could not give an idea, as where two people have to be satisfied my idea would not naturally mean that that would be accepted.

Mr. Douglas

Should not Parliament have some say as to the fee? If it is only a trifling fee for registration, it is all right, but we should know.

Mr. Smith

It is only a trifling fee for registration. In cases where hatcheries are operated as part of an egg supply farm, can the Minister say if they will entail two licences or can they have a combined licence?

Mr. Smith

I cannot tell you.

Mr. Baxter

I would like to go back on this matter again. While the Minister for Finance merely comes into the matter inasmuch as he collects the fees or receives the fees, I cannot see how he can have any other function. It is a matter entirely for the Minister for Agriculture and presumably he is the person who is going to fix the fees. I do not know on what basis he is going to fix them. Is it to be on the basis of inspection by his officials? He has told me that he cannot give me any indication because another Minister comes into the matter. Presumably this is his Bill. There is no provision here to make grants to owners of hatcheries and the Minister for Agriculture should, I expect, have some idea what the cost was going to be.

Mr. Smith

Even if the Senator is right that no other Minister is involved, I have not really considered the question of fees. I think Senators may assume that the Minister for Agriculture will not be likely to give help with one hand and rob with the other hand.

Question put and agreed to.

SECTION 8.

Question proposed: "That Section 8 stand part of the Bill."

Professor Johnston

Perhaps I may be allowed to make a few remarks on the section. I feel that I have a certain limited responsibility for this Bill as a whole because I happened to be a member of the committee which recommended it. I should, therefore, perhaps have paid greater attention to it when it was in its Second Stage, but unfortunately, I was laid up with a cold and prevented from paying much attention to anything at all. The Minister, in this Bill, is proposing to give effect to one of the recommendations of the Committee of Inquiry on Post-Emergency Agricultural Policy and I think we should have great sympathy for him in his attempt to carry it out. Speaking now as a member of that committee, if I may be permitted to use the language of the metaphor, we asked the Minister for a cat and he presented us with a fully grown tiger complete with teeth and claws. I think the Minister in giving effect to the recommendation is doing what perhaps is known as killing a fly with a steel hammer. It was necessary and it is still necessary to license commercial hatcheries which are distributing day-old chicks broadcast throughout the country and who are enabled through operating largescale hatcheries to distribute disease also on a very large scale. The committee of which I was a member recommended that this should be done. May I quote from the second interim report of the committee on poultry production:—

"It is most desirable that eggs used for hatching purpose, should be derived from flocks which are suitable for breeding purposes and free from disease, whether these are run in conjunction with the hatchery or owned by other poultry keepers. We accordingly recommend that distributors of hatching eggs and day-old chicks should be licensed, the conditions for the issue of licences to be determined by the Minister for Agriculture. The holder of a hatchery licence should be prohibited from incubating eggs other than those derived from flocks certified to be blood tested and free from disease. This requirement would necessitate the constant supervision of flocks by poultry instructors and the number of instructors would undoubtedly have to be augmented as the scheme developed."

Now Section 8 of the Bill is the crux of the matter. It is the Minister's method of giving effect to the recommendations. It is the operative clause and it provides that no person shall operate a poultry hatchery save under and in accordance with the poultry hatchery licence. There are various conditions and qualifications. As I said, it is necessary to give effect to the recommendations by legislation to prescribe certain regulations under which commercial hatcheries should be carried on and naturally, in the course of this legislation, to prescribe that any person who conformed with these regulations should receive a commercial hatchery as a matter of right. If, in the course of the business it was found that any of these requirements were not carried out—the person should first of all be advised by the Minister's experts and officials—and if he persisted, he should be hauled before a court and punished by being, I suppose, deprived of his licence. If the Minister had done this he would have given effect in substance to the recommendation of the committee but actually the language of Section 8 seems to regard the keeping of any kind of incubator or poultry hatchery almost as a crime like having a private still or a naughty book in one's possession. It states that no person shall operate a poultry hatchery save under and in accordance with a poultry hatchery licence. The Minister may, by regulations, declare poultry hatcheries of a class defined in the regulations to be exempted but every person who keeps an incubator even for the purpose of producing chickens for himself as distinct from for sale is maintaining a poultry hatchery within the meaning of this Bill. Consequently, it may happen that if the Minister brought this Act into operation and in the stress of an election, say, forgot to implement the sub-section (2) of Section 8, thousands of people throughout the country might find themselves breaking the law.

Mr. Smith

I would be very careful at an election time.

Mr. Douglas

The elections will be held some time, I presume.

Professor Johnston

If the Minister really expressed his intention of implementing sub-section (2) at some time it could be regarded as a statutory instrument. In this connection, it would be possible for the Minister to drive a coach and four through the whole Act by making such widespread exemptions that every hatchery would be exempt from the law.

Now, that seems to me to be an extreme example of what is known in English history as the exercise of the suspending and dispensing power. I would remind the Minister that, on a famous occasion, James II claimed to exercise that power, and that, in consequence of that claim, he went on his travels and lost his job. I would ask the Minister, is he not afraid of something similar happening to himself? I think it ought to be possible, on the Report Stage, to draft an amendment which will give effect to the licensing provision in the more restricted manner which I recommend, and to deprive the Minister of that wide degree of autocratic power which he is claiming for himself under the terms of this and other sections.

This whole matter of developing large-scale poultry production is one that requires co-operation between the Minister's Department and the people generally. Behind such co-operation there must, of necessity, be the mailed first of some of the principles of enacted legislation. I think there should also be the velvet glove of the tactful handling of the people concerned. I think, in general, though we must legislate piecemeal in these matters, that the emphasis should be on education and co-operation rather than on coercive restrictions and bureaucratic regulations. In fact, the committee to which I have referred laid very considerable emphasis on the importance of friendly co-operation. That co-operation exists, and I hope will long continue, between the Minister's expert officials, the county committees of agriculture and the people who are engaged in poultry production and in other forms of agricultural activity. I would dislike any form of legislation which, even in its very wording, seemed to suggest a different or unsympathetic attitude as between the Minister's Department and the people on whose exertions so much depends.

The principal disease which this measure is designed to avoid being spread by large-scale commercial hatcheries, which in other respects are highly desirable, seems to be the one known by the initials B.W.D. The essence of the control of that disease is the regular blood testing of breeding hens and of male birds, I suppose. Now, having blood tests is a very technical operation which requires the existence of a laboratory somewhere or another. I understand that the veterinary college in Dublin is the only place where the necessary laboratory tests can be made.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

I think, Senator, that you are going away from the matter immediately before the House.

Professor Johnston

I think not. It might happen that commercial hatcheries might increase in number so rapidly that they would find it impossible to get all these blood tests done by reason of the absence of adequate facilities up and down the country for doing blood tests. After all, the veterinary college is only in one place, and if this thing is to be implemented properly you might require certain centres up and down the country where blood tests could be examined in a laboratory. Under this section you might have a situation in which, owing to failure on the part of the Minister's Department to provide adequate blood testing facilities, people were unable to keep the law which the Minister had made. The Minister, by his failure to provide adequate laboratory facilities, might, in fact, make it impossible for people with the best will in the world to carry out the terms of this section. Therefore, I think it would be well to proceed a little more gently in this matter.

Mr. Baxter

Are we to understand that the Minister, in taking power to exempt certain hatcheries, means to exempt what we call the hatcheries at present under the committees of agriculture? The regulations governing the administration of this scheme at the moment are satisfactory as far as my experience goes. I do not know whether it is necessary to bring these hatcheries within the terms of this Bill at all. I feel that it is not. I realise that there is the other problem but I certainly think that any further difficulties that may be created for the station holders who have been carrying on this work, no doubt in a small way over a very long period, are going to have a depressing effect on the production of poultry. These difficulties have been very great for some years now, and that is especially true of the present time. If sub-section (2) is meant to give power to exempt these people it is satisfactory. I believe that should be done and I hope that is the purpose of the sub-section.

Senator Johnston made a point with regard to the facilities available for the blood testing of stock and for laboratory work where you have suspected cases of disease. At present, these are not sufficient to meet the demands of poultry producers. I have personal knowledge of the difficulties which instructresses up and down the country have been up against in trying to get this work done satisfactorily in the limited time in which it requires to be done. I do not know what additional facilities will be available for the development of this scheme. I would urge that it is unnecessary to bring people within this scheme who have been doing this work satisfactorily already. The less interference there is with them by the imposition of additional inspectors the better it will be for the poultry industry.

Mr. S. O'Donovan

Senator Sir John Keane spoke about the old hen and asked what was the good of all this legislation when eggs could be hatched by the old method of the hen. He referred to eggs being hatched in the old fashion, and said that the practice generally adopted throughout the country for the production of chicks was the brooding hen. If the Senator were in Holland he would know that no hens are allowed for the hatching of eggs. Therefore, I suggest to him that we are not bound to that totalitarian system that he is so anxious to prove is already in operation here.