EGG MARKETING

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 75, 30 March 1939, Page 20

EGG MARKETING

DEPARTMENT'S ACTION

"UNDESIRABLE PRACTICES"

The suggestion tnat the Internal Marketing Department, in order to comply with the Government requirement that it should make a profit, was continuing some of the undesirable practices it had been brought into existence, to stop was advanced by Mr. T. Gill (Oamaru) at the New Zealand Poultry Producers' Federation conference at Wellington yesterday afternoon. Mr. Gill is a member of the executive and is the producers' representative on the New Zealand Poultry Board. - ».

A remit advocating daily publication by the Internal Marketing Department of their buying and selling prices for eggs was opposed by Mr.. Gill on the ground that the Department's price was frequently not the true market price. He said he would prefer a. price to be published by private merchants. He said that in two years dealing with the Department he had never received more than he could have obtained from private agents and in many cases the amount was, less, He was not criticise ing Mr. Picot or the officers .of the Department, but the policy of the Gov* ernment was definitely wrong. The Government should not take over a private business and then place it on the market in competition with private firms.

Apparently when the Government took over Picot Brothers it argued that the Department must make ; a profit to | justify its having paid a big price for I the business. If the Department was ; still to make a profit it could not do so without continuing some of the j practices that had enabled the private firm to make a profit. It was definitely wrong for the Department to be run on a competitive basis. "Mr. Nash* gets up in the House and says this is a profitable Department, and the people in my district say they don't doubt it," said Mr. Gill. DEMAND FOR PULP. Detailing his experience as a producer selling to the Department, Mr. Gill said that in the winter months, when there was a big demand for pulp, he was notified by the Department that a proportion of his eggs were stale. He had been informed by private merchants that at that time pulp was selling at Is 2d a lb. Eight or nine eggs were required for each lb of pulp and he had been paid lid a dozen. That meant that the Department was making nearly 100 per cent, profit.

The eggs might be stale, but when the weather became warmer and there was no demand for pulp the stale eggs suddenly stopped, and the eggs were sold on the market.

Mr. Gill said he was not making unfair criticism. The inference was unavoidable. The Government business was being run on precisely the same lines that it had been brought in to stop.

The remit was lost,