Govt hints at meat – company curbs

Press, 22 November 1978, Page 1

Govt hints at meat - company curbs

The Government would exercise more control in the freezing industry in future, said the Minister of Transport (Mr McLachlan) at an election meeting in Lincoln last evening. i Mr McLachlan said what had seemed a good start to the sheep-killing season had been dashed bv the row over the rise in killing charges announced early this week. The Government would hold an inquiry next year to see if the new charges were justified, he said.

“In future, we will find more and more of this creeping in,” he said. Asked by an interjector if this meant more Governmen control. Mr McLachlan said it would.

In Invercargill yesterday, the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) said that he was not optimistic or happy about the freezing industry. Speaking at a news conference, he backed criticism of the freezing companies by his Associate Minister of Agriculture (Mr Bolger) who has called the drop in the export meat schedule a “rip-off” bv the companies. “I think the companies were very foolish to low’er the schedule so much at this time in the atmosphere of the problem of settling the (meat workers’) award, the Southland problem, and the General Election just a week away.” Mr Muldoon said. Asked if he saw the

lowering of the export schedule as deliberately inflammatory, Mr Muldoon replied: “. . . 'Frankly, I don’t know. With trty knowledge of the companies, my guess is it wasn’t. My guess is they didn’t think long enough about the consequences.”

Mr Muldoon firmly ruled out any suggestion of nationalising the freezing industry, but he said that delicensing it — advocated by Mr Bolger — was “certainly an option.” But there were problems about delicensing such as swings of production, excess capacity, and labour mobility.

“There may be a halfway house,” Mr Muldoon said.

Yesterday, Mr Sid Slee. of Blackmount, the farmers’ action group leader, said: “Farmers are just itching to withdraw their stock.” Mr Slee was speaking after further developments on the Meat Workers' Union killing ban imposed against Mr Slee and his farmer friend, Mr Owen Buckingham, of Te Anau. Yesterday morning they presented 40 old ewes for slaughter at the Ocean Beach works. The union refused to handle them, but the union’s refusal vindicated the Ocean Beach

Freezing Company, said Mr Slee.

In the afternoon, in what is believed to be an unprecedented step taken by

a farmer against a freezing company, Mr Buckingham filed notice for moving an injunction in the Supreme Court against the Southland Frozen Meat Company for refusing to slaughter his stock. Southland’s other freezing ■ companies, Alliance and Ocean Beach, both put forward the stock for slaughter but the Meat Workers’ Union subbranches at the works refused to handle the animals.

However, the Southland Frozen Meat Company has told Mr Buckingham it will not put his stock up for slaughter until the meat workers’ award has been settled. Mr Buckingham alleges.