AUSTRALIAN MEAT PRICES

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27094, 18 July 1953, Page 7

AUSTRALIAN MEAT PRICES

Press Comment In Britain (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, July 16. “By a salutary, if unkind, coincidence, the news that Britain is to pay more for the ewe mutton —indeed for all the lamb and mutton—she buys from Australia comes just as the retail and wholesale prices of ewe mutton here have been reduced by pressure from consumers,” says the “Manchester Guardian” in a leading article discussing the new Australian meat contract.

Saying that the increase in the price to be paid to Australia was dictated by ’ the terms of the 15-year meat agreement concluded in 1951, the article adds: “This was the largest bulk purchase agreement ever signed for Britain. Under it this country undertook to buy such lamb, mutton and beef as Australia had to export, at prices which were to be based on Australian costs of production. “The long term security, both of market and prices, was to stimulate increased production of meat and, no doubt, the agreement has helped to improve meat supplies. “The risk now seems to be that it may be improving the supply of some meat too much. A similar overstimulation of supply, in relation to consumers’ demand at present prices, seems to be in danger of developing for pork at home. “The obligations which this country accepted under the Australian meat agreement reflect a state of affairs in which, because of , scarcity, extreme security was given to producers.

“British consumers are now expressing their preferences, because larger supplies • enable them to choose, but the producers are still to a large extent insulated from the effects of the-consumers’ choice. What the buyers do not pay in the shops must be paid by the Exchequer in subsidy and, therefore, by the consumers as a whole in taxation.

“A supply system has yet be to evolved by which buyers’ preferences can more quickly influence the amount and quality of meat put on the market, and the present arrangements, with the obligations they carry, look like becoming increasingly unworkable.”

Hospital Commander Acquitted.— Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Gleave, commander of a British military hospital at Chester, was found not guilty at a court-martial and honourably acquitted today on two charges relating to the death of a young private soldier who died in Chester military hospital last April. It was alleged that the soldier had been ill-treated before he died.—London, July 16.