Cuts In Food Rations

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 October 1947, Page 7

Cuts In Food Rations

Sir Stafford announced that the sugar ration would revert to eight ounces weekly (it was recently raised to 10 ounces). The meat ration would remain at Is worth weekly. The bacon ration would remain at one ounce weekly (to which it was reduced recently as a result of the Canadian strike).

There would be an earlier exhaustion of dried >egg stocks, but 66 shell eggs would be distributed per person on ordinary rations, compared with 58 last year. The public must expect fewer and less attractive cakes and buns.

“We can only use our reserves once. If we allow them to become rapidly deflated we face the possi-

bility of wholesale hunger and unemployment. This we are determined to avoid if we can. The long-term measures will take time in maturing. In the meantime we must eat our gold reserves.” Sir Stafford Cripps estimated that all these measures would so improve Britain’s position that the dollar deficit by the end of 1948 should be running at a rate no greater than £250,000,000 annually. Reuter’s political correspondent says the food cuts announced mean that the bacon imports from the dollar area will be cut by £28,000,000, meat by £16,000,000, sugar by £12,000,000, and shell eggs for commercial use by £10,000,000.