MEAT SUPPLIES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 59, 9 February 1925, Page 5

MEAT SUPPLIES.

CONCERTED ACTION SUGGESTED. LONDON, Feb. 7. Giving evidence beforo the Food Commission, Mr Wise submitted a memorandum on the meat supplies. He said the increased demand from other markets made it practically certain that unless concerted action was taken prices would continue to rise. The South African trade was centralised in the hands of two great combines, one American and the other British. The latter centred round the brothers Vestey, who handled 25 per cent, of the total exports. The two groups worked in harmony with the shipping companies. The effect was that they were able to exercise a dangerous control over beef prices in Britain. There was no guarantee that the vast Vestey organisation might not, at any moment, form a temporary or permanent alliance with the American trust. The British consumer would then be at their mercy. Mr Wise proposed the establishment of a meat board whoso duties would include the regulation of the import of meat, the transformations of the Vestey undertakings into an organisation run on public utility lines under Government control, also the development of Empire sources of supply and the elimination of unnecesary profits , in distribution.—A. and N.Z. cable.