Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 February 1920 — New Source of Food Supply [ARTICLE]

New Source of Food Supply

Suggestion Made That Musk Ox Be Added to National Bill of Fare. VAST HERDS IN THE NORTH Practically a Permanent Supply of Beef Assured by Domestication of the Animal, According to Vllhjalmur Stefansson. Washington.—Having already done remarkably well in reindeer farming in Alaska, Uncle Sam is to be asked now to try his hand with musk oxen, to the end that the national meat bill may be cut down and a permanent supply of beef ensured. Explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson brought back from the arctics a story of great possibilities in the way of meat production. He told this story to members of the Canadian parliament in Ottawn, and has also laid his facts and conclusions before some of the Washington officials. Both governments will be asked for appropriations to extend the reindeer industry and to attempt the domestication of the musk ox. —As, Stefansson sees It, there are at least a million square miles of natural grazing ground in the sub-arctics, suited in every particular to the needs and tastes of the northerji caribou and the still more northern musk ox. Vast herds of these animals, tn the wild roam over the so-called “barren lands.” Why not take them under protection, turn their feeding ranges into ranches and abattoirs and ship the meat to the hungry folks down south? The territory is Canadian, but the hunger and high cost of living are * international; the two countries co-operate in .a scheme of conservation. Reindeer Meat Liked. Als sirs and Labrador have proved that the reindeer can be domesticated into a public meat producer. Deer meat has been shipped from Nome and other Alaskan points to Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago and even to New York, and people who have bought It have asked for more. Stefansson now suggests that the business 6b taken up seriously, its herding and ranching extended to the great prairies of the Canadian North, and the supply of meat to the whole continent begun on a really commercial basis. But he ventures still farther and urges a similar experiment with the musk oxen. Now, the musk ox, being a peculiarly arctic animal, has never before figured in the American scheme of mar-

keting. In its own country, however, it is greatly valued for its meat’s sake, and explorers who have eaten musk ox roasts up there say it is a pity that the Eskimos should have a monopoly of so good a diet The meat is hardly distinguishable in taste. It seems, from regulation beef, and in nutritive value is quite its equal. _ There Is wool to be considered, too. The average sized musk ox carries 15 pounds of Just-as-good-as-sheep’s wool, which it wears as a thick cold-proof vest under a shaggy hair topcoat In fact, the musk ox is pretty nearly as much sheep as cattle. It is two and one-half or three times the size of a sheep, running about 700 pounds, and Is in that same proportion a more prolific source of raw material for suits and socks. Thick-set, with massive head and short legs, the musk ox looks clumsy, but Is surprisingly nimble on its feet It travels Usually in herds of 25 or 30, and Its feed is grass, saxifrage plants and dwarf willows. Stefansson points out, as an argument in favor of his subpolar ranching scheme, that the musk ox needs neither to be housed nor fed, being quite able to

fend for itself nnd even to protect Itself against wolves. Provides Beef, Milk and Wool. The habitat of this zoological nondescript, which gives beef as tender as aprize steer’s, milk as rich as Jersey cream and wool as good as a sheep's, is the very “top country” of America. The herds never coma farther south than halfway down the coast of Hudson bay. and they do not go west of Ilie Mackenzie river. On the north they roam along the arctic mainland coast and on the Islands beyond. There does not seem to be any good reason, however, why the musk ox could not be kept successfully within the nearer bounds of the “barren lands,” or in Alaska, where transportation facilities would be more easily possible. Nearly enough like the musk ox to be < distant cousin, the woodland buffalo is Hiiother denizen of the North that may some day be made the base of a new merit supply. His habits are somewhat the same as those of the arctic ox, but the country that he inhabits Is an area of wooded land at the extreme north of Alberta, west of Slave river. Through the forests of this region roam small buffalo herds, whose total numbers probably do not exceed 500 head. They are the only survivors In a natural state of the countless bison that once covered the western plains.