MEAT EXPORT CONTROL

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 25, 29 July 1936, Page 10

MEAT EXPORT CONTROL

The New Zealand Meat Producers' Board presents the annual account of its stewardship with warrantable satisfaction to itself. On its own showing-it has done exceedingly well for the pastoral industry. The market has been "fed" judiciously, avoiding both glut and famine, and ensuring the highest prices ruling in London for imported lambs. The sum of over £18,470 has been expended on advertising New Zealand lamb and mutton in the United Kingdom in order to impress on the public mind the high quality of New Zealand meat, not to be confused with that sold as "Empire." Quality has always been the special care of the board and rightly so, for in the lamb trade at any rate, New Zealand is now challenged by Australia with increasing exports of such meat to the United Kingdom. This challenge should not be, and we believe it is not, lightly regarded in New Zealand. In six to seven years Australian lamb shipments to the United Kingdom have grown from 2,000,000 to 4,800,000 carcasses, but at pi'esent New Zealand lamb commands in London a premium of nearly Id per lb. But important as the question of quality is the New Zealand Meat Board attaches very great importance to its policy of shielding the meat export industry against attacks by monopolies. It finds it necessary to remind producers themselves of the legislative powers it possesses and exercises in their best interests—as the board sees them. Free competition apparently has its advocates among some farmers, but the board will have" none of it, pointing to what has happened to producers in the Argentine and what the board is determined shall not happen here. It reiterates its policy in the following terms: The board has definitely .fixed its policy against excessive control of freezing works by overseas interests. But the board has never attempted to dictate to distributors and purchasers how they shall conduct their business, nor sought to control the market. It has, however, won and retained the good will of distributors and supplied an article of the best qualify produced, taking the market as it found it. It also minds its own business ■which, on the evidence of its annual report, has been successfully conducted, fully justifying the establishment of the board at a lime when the meat export trade of New Zealand was in a serious condition. To that extent it has done good service to the producer in particular and to the Dominion in general.