N.Z. Unable To Do Much To Ease Meat Shortage In U.K.

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22821, 16 December 1948, Page 6

N.Z. Unable To Do Much To Ease Meat Shortage In U.K.

(P.A.) YY ELLINGTON, Dec. 15. Official sources cannot see much prospect of New Zealand boinj' able to relieve appreciably the gloomy outlook in Britain for meat caused by the falling off of Argentine supplies.

The New Zealand Meat Producers' Board, which controls meat exports, pointed out that nearly all New Zealand's exportable meat went to the United Kingdom, the only other shipments being very small ones to colonial dependencies.

The prices paid to New Zealand under the present seven-year contract with the United Kingdom could not vary more than seven and a half per cent up or down on the previous year’s price. Within the term of the sevenyear contract, however. New Zealand had undertaken to endeavour to lift production by 15,000 tons. The general secretary of the New Zealand Federated Farmers, Mr. A. P. O'Shea, said that if poorer land in New Zealand could be worked economically, farmers could considerably expand their production of meat. It was a quest of costs and sufficient supplies of fertiliser, he said.