French support likely

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34132, 20 April 1976, Page 13

French support likely

fN.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND. Likely French support for access of New Zealand butter to the European Common Market was part of a trend over the last three years, said the national president of Federated Farmers (Mr J. T. Kneebone). “Three years ago, when I met French producers, everything was "Non, non, non*, but now, the French line against foreign imports of food seems to be softening,” he said. The support which the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) had said he had found for New Zealand’s E.E.C., butter case from the French President (Mr Giscard D’Estaing) was “very good news.”

France was such a huge country that to get co-oper-ation for access for New Zealand food was a big part of the E.E.C. battle. ■’There has been a concerted effort to get alongside the French producers in the last three years,” Mr Kneebone said. Little-publicised work by the Meat Board’s European adviser in Brussels (Mr R. Woods) and the Government’s agricultural attache in Paris (Mr A. Shepherd) was now bearing fruit. New Zealand had been trying to show the French that it could complement, rather than compete with, French food production. A decision on the New Zealand butter quotas in the E.E.C. for 1978-80 will be made in Brussels at a meeting of Ministers of Agriculture in the middle of May.