Import bars criticised

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32612, 21 May 1971, Page 3

Import bars criticised

(New Zealand Press Association)

WANGANUI, May 20. New Zealand exporters who complained about import restrictions on farm produce in the United States and other countries were fortunate that they did not have to contend with the restrictions here, Mr R. E. Anderson, Agricultural Attache to the United States Embassy in Wellington, said to Wanganui Federated Farmers. f I 1 !* A I AA*. I

The New Zealand system of import regulations was patterned after a Maori pa, he said. “This, I understand, is a series of concentrated fortification,” Mr Anderson said. “If you break through one, you are confronted by a bigger one. “You have, for example, built a pa around your turkey industry,” he said. “This is an industry in which the United States is the most efficient producer in the world. “Our turkeys, we maintain, are plumper, juicier and cheaper than your turkeys (which are practically nonexistent anyway), and we could sell a lot more of them here. “However, we can’t sell them because of a sanitary restriction—the outer walls of the pa,” he said. “Some of our turkeys are supposed , to be carriers of a certain disease which they might give your.

turkeys I must say we eat them with no ill effects.” If that “outer wall” could be broken down, the next barrier would be encountered. “This is an import quota allowing us to bring in 107} per cent of what we brought in last year which was zero. “And if we were able to solve that problem, we would encounter yet another defence a tariff of 40 per ; cent, twice the British pre- : ferential rate.” Agricultural produce i. i- : ported from the United States cost New Zealand only about s6m annually, he said, I “My job is, of course, to ; sell more United States' agricultural products. Have : you ever tried to sell agriculi tural products to New Zealand?” I “Well, I’m not trying to be ' difficult when I say it’s ' bloody near impossible. • “We do manage to sell s some Virginian tobacco, rice, ! citrus fruits, and some dried • fruits,” he said.