N.Z. Meat Trading Faces Double Threat

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30339, 15 January 1964, Page 12

N.Z. Meat Trading Faces Double Threat

(From Our Own Reporter) WELLINGTON, January 14. Little is known of the progress of the bilateral meat talks in London, to be expanded into a multilateral meeting in about 10 days. The New Zealand delegation, led by Mr M. J. Moriarty, Assistant Secretary for Overseas Trade, is constantly reporting progress. Its members are believed to be encountering powerful British arguments that higher prices for limited quantities of meat on the British market would compensate for the loss of free entry, now guaranteed contractually.

Whether Britain will control meat imports quantity or by minimum import prices has not yet finally been resolved. She is thought quite likely to propose paying more for meat imports, thus turning terms of trade against herself. But if she decides to maintain a cheap food policy yet still wants to reduce the cost of domestic agricultural support programmes, she may seek agreement on a system of variable levies. The chairman of the Meat Board, Mr J. D. Ormond, and its general manager, Mr J. W. de Gruchy, will leave Auckland tomorrow to fly to Washington for talks on the United States proposal to limit beef imports from New Zealand. They expect to be away a fortnight. Mr K. C. Durrant, a senior research officer in the Treasury, will also leave the team of officials negotiating meat entry terms into Britain, and fly across the Atlantic to the Washington conference.

The Minister of Overseas Trade (Mr Marshall) announced these moves last night after a day of urgent consultation on meat marketing problems in his office. He first met Messrs Ormond and de Gruchy, then advisers on the officials

committee of the Cabinet economic policy subcommittee. Then the Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake), who had also briefly broken his holiday, called in to check the situation in closed conversations with his deputy. The talks will be held bilaterally between New Zealand and the United States. Similar talks with Australia, which was represented by the head of its Trade Department, New Zealand-born Sir Allan Westerman, have already begun. Australian producers have regarded the moves with some alarm. Double Threat Some observers in Wellington yesterday voiced dismay at the apparent equanimity with which New Zealanders, fresh from holidays, were regarding perhaps the first double threat to a major export. New Zealand strategy so far has been to play down the American moves. At first reluctant to even reply to the United States when it officially raised the issue, New Zealand has been hoping to go slow. But the United States has pressed for and won what it had described as “early” talks. To avoid dignifying the conversations over-much and

to make it rather harder for American negotiators it was recently decided to send no Cabinet Minister, neither Mr Marshall, nor the Minister of Agriculture (Mr Taiboys). But it remains possible as negotiations progress in London, that Mr Marshall may need to make a quick trip there. Messrs Ormond and de Gruchy are expected to be back in the United States in April, with a Meat Board delegation testifying before a United States Tariff Commission inquiry into beef and veal imports. This inquiry was ordered recently by the United States Senate. The talks now about to open have been inaugurated by the executive branch, in response to pressure from domestic cattlemen. The newly-named Meat Board representative in North America, Mr A. P. O’Shea, formerly general secretary of Federated Farmers, will not take up his post before March or April.