N.Z. butter gets reprieve

Press, 14 October 1985, Page 18

N.Z. butter gets reprieve

NZPA staff correspondent London Dairy Board officials in London breathed a sigh of relief when European bureaucrats announced they would not sell cut-price butter at Christmas.

Last year’s European Economic Ccommunity "Christmas bonus” scheme — designed to rid Europe of some of its million-tonne surplus — forced New Zealand butter off shop shelves for months.

The European Commission, officials who run the E.E.C., said there would not be any further half-price sales at Christmas because their high costs had not been justified by sales increases of about only 20 per cent.

Instead, an emergency

programme will be launched to rid the community of some old butter for cooking. The sales will be subsidised, but they will not be as costly as keeping the butter in store.

A Dairy Board spokesman in London said that the board was in favour of that form of disposal but against cut-rate ditching in direct competition to fresh butter. The bonus scheme drew vociferous criticism last year and seemed to be favoured by few countries in the Community except Germany. “Nobody really wanted the scheme except the Germans. It was stupid. There was no evidence that it did anything to increase the real market for butter,” a board spokesman said.