RATIONING OF BUTTER

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 266, 23 August 1949, Page 2

RATIONING OF BUTTER

Abolition Opposed bv Mr Walsh “TAKING IT FROM POOR AND NEEDY” (P.A.) WELLINGTON, August 22., “It is incredible that two men prominent in public life can have the effrontery to advocate publicly the transfer of some 14,000 tons of butter within New Zealand from children and needy, into the hands of the wealthy,” Said the chairman of the Aid for Britain National Council (Mr F. P. Walsh) commenting to-day on the recommendation by the New Zealand Dairy Conference that butter rationing be abolished and that the Government subsidy be withdrawn.

The conference, said Mr Walsh, had been stampeded into passing a remit which, it would seem, hacl been fostered by the chairman of the Dairy Board (Mr W. E. Hale) and the vicechairman (Mr A. Linton). The essence of the argument advanced by Messrs Hale and Linton, said Mr Walsh, was that because of alleged rationing abuses it would be better to lift rationing and allow the price to go up. The price, it was claimed, would ration sales, and Mr Hale firmly believed there would not be less butter for export. Mr Walsh said that at 2s 6d per lb (thd price quoted by Mr Linton) big families would ration butter, as would pensioners and others, and it might be true that New Zealand could still send as much to Britain. “But I do not think the British would accept it,” said Mr Walsh, adding that they would be the first to react to “the rank injustice of Mr Linton’s scheme for keeping up their butter ration by taking it from the poor and needy and transferring it to the rich and greedy.”'

Long-term Interests “The present rationing policy is criticised as conflicting with this country’s long-term interests,” said Mr Walsh. “Let us take a look at the proposed policy of ‘ no rationing and no subsidy.’

“Britain is at present paying a subsidy of Is 3d per lb to enable her to retail our butter at Is 6d per. lb. If this subsidy, too, were removed (and why not, if Mr Linton’s analysis is true?) our butter would cost the British consumer 2s 9d per lb. Even at Is 6d, certain poorer areas have already found their allocation of butter unlifted in the face of competition from margarine at 9d. At 2s Gd our butter would be relatively unsaleable in large areas of Britain. “It. is time our dairy industry leaders discovered that the world has developed a low-eost butter substitute, that a generation of consumers in Britain, and other lands has, because of war shortages, been eating cheap margarine and liking it and, furthermore?, doing well on it. “In the United States and in Canada, too, consumer resistance has brought butter prices down rapidly all this year, and their Governments have for some time been buying heavily at support prices to prevent the farmer being, badly left with unsaleable butter on his hands.

Would Not be Able to Sell “Obviously Mr Hale and Mr Linton have badly misjudged our Dominion’s long-term interests. If their new policy of allowing butter prices to find their ‘ proper ’ level were followed to-day—overseas as well as hero—-these two gentlemen and their wealthy friends would quickly find they had enough butter and to spare in this pountry. They could wallow m it or feed it to their pigs. The only thing they couldn’t do with -it would bo to sell it.”

It was to be hoped that more soberminded farmers in less exalted positions would see just now far that policy would lead them, said Mr Walsh. He was more hopeful of that when he read the comment of one delegate to the dairy conference that “rationing was difficult to administer, but that was no reason why New Zealand should fall down on its major responsibility to supply Britain to the maximum” and undermine its sole market for butter.

The Dominion’s long-term and short-term interests lay with Britain and, with 97 per cent, of' their exports going*to that one market, dairy producers should be the very last to forget that.