POOLING POLICY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 31 May 1927, Page 3

POOLING POLICY.

i ~~ * A RKPI.Y TO MR. GOODFEDLOW

AUCKLAND, May 30. Mr W. Grounds, chairman of the Dairy Produce Control Board, addressed the North Auckland Dairy Conference in reply to Mr Goodfellow’-s advocacy of the abandonment of the board’s butter and cheese pooling policy. “It is isuggetsed that without pricefixation, pooling is a mistake, bub while the former is essential to- -sound marketing and is adopted im all branches of commerce, do not let your attention be diverted to it to the exclusion of all else,” Mr Grounds said. “Pooling has nothing whatever to do with the marketing at the London end. Why, then, do London interests so concern themselves with it ? . It has been suggested' that poo-'iing should (have been discontinued immediately after the abolition of price-fixation, but the board could not, even had it wished, shed its responsibility so- promiscuously. The- factories had given the' board the management of fill their produce of this season. Even though the board should have continued its policy to a -successful conclusion, there is no justification for casting control overboard. The -suggestion] seems to me that, just as we have reached port we should jettison- the cargo in the hope that some of it will float <jn to a friendly -shore.” The following resolution wa-s i>assed ; “That this conference, representative of all dairy companies north of Auckland, reaffirms its confidence in Mr Grounds a-ml the original policy of the hoard. We deprecate the intrusion of political influences into what is purely the dairy farmers’ business, and believe the appointment to the London.agency by the Government iof Mr Stro-nach Paterson, well-known to be strongly antagonistic to control, -has- been seriously injurious to the- prosneet of co-operative market-ins: of New Zealand’® dairy produce.”