RISE IN PRICE OF BABY FOOD

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 128, 23 February 1939, Page 8

RISE IN PRICE OF BABY FOOD

Karitane Products DUE TO HIGH PRODUCTION COSTS Prices of Karitane baby foods, such as are widely used by Plunket Society mothers throughout New Zealand, have risen by Id. to 2d. a pound. The cost of Karilac has gone up from 1/4 to 1/6, and that of Kariol has increased from 2/3 to 2/4. These two substances are important items in the diet of young children reared under the Plunket system. They are used in conjunction with cow’s milk to correct its composition, so that it more closely resembles human milk, and to supply dietetic deficiencies in the feeding of infants. In consequence an increase in price is likely to be felt by many thousands of mothers.

Interviewed yesterday, Miss B. M. Suckling, secretary of the Karitane Products Society, Wellington, said that the prices had been raised only from necessity. The foods were still extremely reasonably priced. The principle of keeping the price of these baby foods as low as was humanly possible had been emphatically stressed by Sir Truby King lilmself during his lifetime, and remained a guiding principle of the society. Sir Truby, she recalled, had personally effected a reduction in the price of sugar of milk in New Zealand from 2/6 to 1/-, by himself importing a shipment of this substance from Holland, for the benefit of New Zealand mothers. Sugar of milk' was, of course, now manufactured in New Zealand. The Karitane products had been kept down in price, no alteration having been made previously in spite of the general increase in the prices of raw materials, labour and factory production. They had • been sold to the public almost below cost price, and no margin had hitherto been allowed for the difference between wholesale and retail prices. Since 1936 the wages of girls working in the Karitane factory had risen by 25 per cent., and, of course, other costs were proportionately higher. It had now become necessary to make a slight increase in the prices, the new schedule having taken effect from February 3. Makers of other types of baby foods stated that no alteration was being made at present, though in some cases Increases bad taken place in the past tw’o years.

The manager of the Wellington municipal milk depot, Mr. It. E. Herron, said that the price of this essential baby food was not appreciably higher this summer than last. He .contradicted the assertion made by a Wellington mother that it had risen from 2}d. last summer to 3id. at present: tire average price last summer, he said, was actually 3 1-Bd., so that the increase was negligible. He said that in the summer period from August, 1937, to April, 1938, two prices prevailed, the first being 3d. a pint, the second 3Jd. as at present. The average therefore was 3 l-Bd. This year, therefore, there was an average increase of 1-Sd., because of the price of butterfat, on which the city milk prices were based, being -slightly higher. He said that two or three years ago, when wages and costs generally were lower and the price of butterfat was several pence less, milk had been slightly cheaper.