City Milk Supply

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25246, 26 July 1947, Page 8

City Milk Supply

The Christchurch Metropolitan Milk Board has succeeded at last in putting into operation a system of delivery zoning that gives consumers, within limits, a choice of vendors. Though not as wide a choice as under the haphazard and wasteful system before the war, it will ensure that no consumer is forced to trade with a vendor who does not satisfy him. Where there is room, within the legal limits, for wide variations of quality, methods of handling, and standards of service, this is the consumer’s unquestioned right. Under the new scheme there may not be a large change-over of custom, at least for the time being. For one thing, those vendors with the best reputation will need time to arrange for larger supplies of milk.’ But it is certain that vendors whose product or service does not give general satisfaction will quickly lose some trade and may eventually be eliminated. That is as it should be. The evil of. the monopoly system created by the war-time regulations, necessary though they were at the time, was that the consumer had no protection against an unsatisfactory vendor—except by appealing to the local authority, which might not always see eye to eye with a complaining consumer.

In their satisfaction at seeing a necessary reform achieved, consumers may feel disposed to forget why it was so long delayed. They will be unwise to do so, just as they will be unwise to give no further thought to the bettering of their milk supply. But for the opposition of a substantial number of vendors, a rezoning scheme would have been introduced last December. They fought it with every means at their command, and might still have been fighting it in the Supreme Court, if it had not been discovered that the interim injunction granted them by the Court left the metropolitan area without a valid zoning scheme and the whole milk industry of the city open, for the time being, to unrestricted competition. It will be surprising if the months of argument, appeal, and delay have not brought many citizens, and probably some members of the Milk Board, to recognise the need for a municipal milk supply. Frustrated in its efforts to give the public the service to which it is entitled, the board might well have inclined towards this solution had not a majority of its members been committed by an election policy, three years old, supporting private enterprise in the milk industry. The Citizens’ Association did recognise, .in 1944, that changing circumstances might impel it to modify this policy, but if stipulated that “no change in the “ direction of municipalisation should "be made without the sanction of “ electors at a poll ”. Past and impending developments both call 1 for such a change, and the November elections will provide citizens with an opportunity to endorse it. The Government and the Central Milk Council have both shown that they are determined to transfer milk treating plants from private to public control, and public opinion is tending to agree. The logical accompaniment is, a publicly-owned distributing system. The Citizens’ Association, preparing for the local body elections in November, must soon review its policy on milk supply. It will be wise if it does not tie its candidates’ hands as it did in 1941; it will be wiser still if it affirms that the best interests of the public will be served by a public agency; guaranteeing the delivery of milk of the highest quality, treated and distributed in the most hygienic conditions.