BUTCHERS FINED

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 41, 18 February 1944, Page 2

BUTCHERS FINED

PRICE ORDER BREACHES

LOSSES OX SALE OF BEEF

(P.A.) CHRISTCHURCH. Thursday. Four, butchers . were charged in the Magistrate's Court before Mr. G. G. Chisholm, S.M., with' breaches of price orders relating to meat. Each defendant was convicted ancl fined. Mr. G. D. Hutchison, for the prosecution, said that in the present cases the excess prices charged by the defendants had in most cases been only a halfpenny or a penny, but, however small the excess, it was unfair to competitors who were abiding by the price order. For the defence, Mr. C. S. Thomas said his clients were pleading guilty as clearly they had committed a breach of the price order. Butchers' retail prices had been fixed, but no ceiling had been put on the wholesale prices. Under the price order of 1939 the retailed beef prices were based on the purely assumed wholesale prices of 3G/ per 1001b in the flush of the season and up to 48/ in the winter. Last year, when the offences were committed, the wholesale price of beef in the flush of the season was 41/6 and in the other season it rose to 75/. Butchers were paying for stabilisation out of their own pocket, said Mr. Thomas. One defendant was fined £2 on each of two charges. Two others, trading m partnership, were each fined £1 'on one charge. The fourth defendant, who pleaded not guilty to three charges of offering to sell meat at a price in excess of that allowed, was fined £2 on each charge.