PRICE OF BEEF.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 22 January 1925, Page 7

PRICE OF BEEF.

HIGH OPERATING COSTS. VESTY’S AND THE COLONIAL TRADE, . BY CABLE-PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT. (Received Jail. 22. 1.15 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 21. Lord Yestey, giving evidence before the Pood Commission, stated that the Union Cold Storage Company owned about 450,000 cattle in doiith America. South Africa and Australia. Most of the cattle were in the Northern Territory of Australia, where, at present, they had over 60,000 yattle ready for killing, but were unable to do so owing to the excessive cost of labour and other handling conditions. Consequently the meat works at Port Darwin had bad been closed down for three years. It was a criminal situation that at present it was more profitable to let cattle die on the stations than to put them through the Port Darwin meat works. Large resources were thus lost to the Empire for three years, largely owing to the apparent indifference of all parties concerned. When they were operating their works they complained to the Australian Government of the ruinous conditions, but labour conditions throughout Australia were then so serious that the Government could 'do nothing. They were not blaming the Australian Government. The company were the only people who had made a serious effort to develop the cattle industry in the Northern Territory, ail'd, if given real support by Australia, there was no place in the British Empire where the expenditure of a portion of a million sterling, the Government subsidy to the colonies, could result in such immediate return from an increase of beef export. He menHotted that diiring the last season they had wdrked Port Darwin works, the cost of operating the works and putting the meat f.o.b. the steamer, was over £lO per head, as compared with 35s in the River Plate, owing to the fact that wages in Australia were high, ,hours shorter, and the work not so good. He declared that there was an absolutely free market for cattle. The accusation that they controlled the price of meat was absurd and wholly untrue.' They were unable, in any way, to control the price; it was solely a question of supply and demand. The root cause bf the present price of beef, whieji was fairly cheap as compared with other commodities, was that the Cohtinerit was now taking lafge quantities. They took equal to about 1,250,000 cattle, in 1924, as compared with nothing in pre-liar days. There .was an absolute shortage of meat and no likelihood of lower average prices in the near future. They had worked for j*he British public for the last six months for nothing There Was no .shortage of bold storage in Britain, and the allegation that, owing to the Ybstev interest in coßl storage, bacon was rotting on the quays at Liverpo'ol was a downright lie. The statement that excessive cold storage charges was one of the principal eaiises of the rise in the price of meat was absurd. The' company’s 2356 retail butchers’ shops in Britain showed a profit of under a halfpenny per pound, without allowing interest on capital or depreciation. The cause of the increase in the price of meat was the price paid to the grower, amounting, in the case of colonial mutton and lamb, to over 100 per cent.—Reuter.

EXTRA EDITION.