DAIRY PRODUCE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXII, Issue LXXII, 26 May 1917, Page 2

DAIRY PRODUCE.

Supplies of first-grade butter in bulk for military purposes are reported (says the Wellington Post) as having been purchased during the week at 16d per pound for 3000 boxes, and 17yd per pound for a further line of a like quantity. The terms of the tender were for "butter for export." London is paying 202s to 204s per cwt for New Zealand butter on the spot. Cheese is unchanged. From private advices received from Canada it is learned this week that Western Can-ada-Pacific Coast territory will in future be practically independent of New Zealand. Local supplies are plentiful, and quality shows a marked

improvement; moreover, the local market cannot look at present London values, even if the butter were required and able to find trans-Pacific freight space. In a review of the New Zealand 1916-17 cheese export season, Mr Louis J. Nathan, chairman of Joseph Nathan and Co., Ltd., London, informed shareholders of the position, and added: "The British Government went over our heads direct to New Zealand, and acted through the Government of New Zealand. Armed with the powerful lever of owning all the refrigerated space in the export steamers it made an arrangement with the New Zealand factories to acquire the whole output on the basis of 9£d per lb f.o.b. New Zealand, and cancelled all sale contracts made for forward delivery. The withdrawal of all the New Zealand cheese from this market naturally further forced up the prices here for English, Canadian, Dutch, United States, and French cheese of every description, to the enormous benefit of the farmers of these respective countries. If our cheese is needed for the Forces no one is going to complain. We New Zealanders yield to no one in loyalty and patriotism, but we do complain bitterly of the method adopted—the exceptional treatment meted out to NewZealand as a whole, as compared witTi that meted out to the Canadian!. English manufacturers, and those of Holland, the United States of America, etc. Why should the latter be allowed to_ benefit from the extremely high prices ruling here, up to 170s, and New Zealand suffer all its forward contracts to be cancelled and its output requisitioned at 9Jd per lb f.o.b. New Zealand, say 99s per cwt c.i.f. ? The Government must have known that it needed the New Zealand cheese, for it offered New Zealand 8d when the season opened. If it had acted then, and before all these large sales took place, no one would complain. _ It could have out all on the same footing by limiting the sale prices for cheese in London. It is doing so wow." Last year the Government fixed the prices "of milk, but left cheesa and butter prices nntotiched, thus offering every inducement for farmers to turn their milk into cheese. The regulations limiting the price of cheese and butter should have been brought into force coincidently with fixing the prices of milk and the rerirnsitioning of Ne*v Zealand cheese. That was being done now. Common fairness and justice demanded that buyers, importers, and distributors, who bought the cheese outputs from New Zealand factories, took the risk of such buying and sold the cheese, should be reimbursed their expenses,, together with a reasonable brokerage, and the same applied to those who had arranged for cheese on consignment. We at least expect reasonable treatment and a little courtesy and British justice, Mr Nathan concluded.