SMALLER LOAVES

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 April 1946, Page 7

SMALLER LOAVES

PLAN UNDER CONSIDERATION IN BRITAIN UNRRA’s WHEAT DEMANDS LONDON, April 22. “The Cabinet this week will consider a bakery trade plan for a smaller loaf,” says the Daily Mail. “The bakers propose to reduce the 21b loaf by 4oz and the 11b loaf by 2oz. This would ensure a reduction of bread consumption and avoid official rationing, with all its difficulties.” The United States Secretary of Agriculture (Mr, Clinton Anderson) told a press conference in Washington that the wheat exporting countries were unable to supply UNRRA with the 700,000 tons of wheat and flour monthly requested for famine relief. UNRRA would, however, be allotted more than the 346,000 tons previously promised for April. Mr. Anderson said: “There is simply not enough wheat in existence to give UNRRA what it is asking for.” Replacing British Wheat.

Mr. Anderson announced-that the United States would guarantee to supply 200,000 tons of wheat which Britain proposed immediately to divert to countries threatened by famine. The Director-General of UNRRA (Mr. F. H. La Guardia) declared that, in spite of Mr. Anderson’s statement that there was not enough wheat in the United States to supply UNRRA’s demands, he would fight for the 125,000,000 bushels requested originally. Mr. La Guardia warned that he would hold the Combined Food Board responsible for the famine zones. He added that it was unfair that one country should have eight or nine weeks’ supply of food, while another was down to a two days’ reserve. In a message to Congress President Truman described the months ahead as critical for'UNRRA. He said that only concerted action action by the United Nations could obviate a serins shortage of food and subsequent emergency conditions throughout the world.

Calling on the United Nations to give the world food shortage priority over all other questions, the annual conference of the British Independent Labour Party at Southport passed a resolution declaring that the situation demanded the immediate establishment of a world food organisation incorporating UNRRA. The conference decided to telegraph Mr. Attlee urgently requesting that British stocks should immediately be released for the peoples of Europe. Fed to Animals. Britain’s war-time Food Minister, Lord Woolton, who is visiting the United States, addressing the Unitarian Service Committee, said that as a visitor it was not his business to make any observations on the handling of food, but he could not help observing the large quantities of human, foodstuffs which were going to animals.

Three thousand inmates of prisons in the Buenos Aires province, the heart of Argentina’s food belt, have volunteered to give half their daily ration to the world’s starving people for the duration of the food emergency, says the Buenos Aires correspondent of the Associated Press. The prisoners were moved by appeals from UNRRA, the Argentine Government, and the Pope.