Guarantee For Pig Prices

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30741, 4 May 1965, Page 18

Guarantee For Pig Prices

(From Our Own Reporter) WELLINGTON, May 3. The Government will underwrite the prices paid by meat operators to pig producers to the level of the current schedule price.

Announcing this tonight, the Minister of Agriculture (Mr Talboys) said discussions would be held with producer and trade representatives with a view to incorporating the guarantee into a permanent market safeguard. Such a scheme would be a safeguard to producers against circumstances such as those that had arisen since the discovery of the disease trichinosis in one pig in the Auckland province, with a consequent falling off in pig meat demand. He said that by underwriting the schedule, the Government would guarantee to meat operators any loss they might make by purchasing pigs at the rates in the current schedule. The Minister said he wanted to emphasise that medical authorities had stated there was no danger to humans in eating pig meat if it was properly cooked. He expected that with this assurance sales of pig meat would soon return to normal and “the Government’s action is an expression of confidence fa this belief.” Mr Taiboys said that since the diagnosis of the disease there had been extensive testing of pigs submitted to Auckland freezing works and abattoirs for slaughter. Only one positive result had emerged and this seemed to confirm the experience of

“Testing will, however, continue and it is being extended to cover other districts. Efforts to find the piggery from which the positive case came are under way.” be said.

some other countries where the number of cases discovered in pigs had been small.