CONSTRICTED LARDER

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 121, 17 February 1944, Page 5

CONSTRICTED LARDER

Britain’s Need Of Butter And Meat CANBERRA, February 16. Nutrition experts were, he believed, studying, whether the Australian butter ration of Boz. a week could be safely reduced. said Mr. W. Bankes Amery, leader of the United Kingdom food mission to Australia and New Zealand, today. Australia’s export of butter to Britain was much below the pre-war figure of about 90,000 tons a year and the same applied to New Zealand. Australia was sending considerably less than the peak figure of 223,000 tons of carcase meat she exported. to Britain before the war, and New Zealand meat exports were also down. Britain agreed to take and ship every ounce of meat available for export. Britain herself was now producing only twofifths of her meat consumption, compared with half before the war. This was because she had concentrated since the outbreak of war on dairy cattle to provide .milk and milk foods for mothers and children. Argentina and other South American countries were maintaining their supply of meat to Britain. Britain’s Urgent Need. “There is urgent need for us to contribute more generously to the dangerously constricted larder of the United Kingdom,” declares the "Sydney Morning Herald” in an editorial today. Urging that more manpower should be diverted to the Australian food front, the paper says the quickest way of .helping. Britain to meet her present shortages is by modification” of the. existing Australian ration scales. “Rationing, so far as it has gone, has forced us perhaps to modify our menus, but it has not meant the tightening of belts in any section of the community,” continues the “Herald.” “We are not, of course, the only food exporting country with responsibility in this matter. The United States, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa, have their own narts to play and sacrifices to make. Each countrv is answerable to its own conscience. There will.be no hesitation among the great majority of Australians in accepting an immediate downward revision of our own liberal ration scale, not only in the interests of our hard-pressed kinsmen in Britain, but as part of our inescapable obligation to the wider Allied cause. He gives twice who gives quickly.”