MEAT AT A CHEAPER RATE

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 227, 21 June 1941, Page 12

MEAT AT A CHEAPER RATE

Hawke’s Bay Suggestion

FARMERS NOT IN ACCORD WITH PROPOSAL

Dominion Special Service

HASTINGS. June 19

A suggestion that meat should be made available in all centres at a much cheaper rate than at present if at any time there was a chance that good food might be destroyed was rejected on the voices at a meeting of the Hawke’s Bay provincial executive of the Farmers’ Union in Hastings yesterday afternoon. The suggestion was made in the form of a remit from the Puketapu branch.

In sponsoring the remit. Mr. H. Hartree said that the annual consumption of meat a head of population in New Zealand was about two head of sheep. There were many people iu this Dominion who could spend only a limited sum each week on meat, and if they could be given a cheaper product, they would eat a lot more meat.

The president, Mr. N. R. Jamieson, said that the Minister of Marketing, Mr. Barclay, had stated that meat would not be destroyed, and he thought that the Government would keep a close eye on the position. .

Mr. R. . Talbot: I would like to ask the mover of the motion whose hide it is intended to take this out of—the farmer or the butcher? Mr. Hartree: I don’t care whose hide we take it out of. We are at war now, and We should be eternally damned if we allow meat to be destroyed in this country. Farmers have had a pretty good go with wool, and we should be prepared to let the meat go on to the,market for practically nothing rather than see it destroyed.

Mr. J. Harris said rfiat it would be a bit hard on those men who raised stock that did not grow much wool.