SUGGESTED REMEDIES.

Northern Advocate, 19 September 1910, Page 2

SUGGESTED REMEDIES.

"My investigations led me to the following conclusions: —I. The scrupulous care in cleanliness, inspection, and handling which Australia and New Zealand adopt in the treatment of all food products is largely waste of time and money if similar methods are not insisted on in London. 2. The method of discharging in London should be under some supervision or inspection, a.;d the cost of handling greatly reduced, and the time taken in the process considerably lessened. 3 Barge transport should be absolutely forbidden. It is impossible to keep Thames barges, surrounded by the dirty Thames water, clean enough and wholesome enough to prevent the contamination of food products, Be sides, they are too slow, and necessitate too frequent handling. Train transport is cleaner, freer from objections, and cheaper in the end. 4 All frozen meat should be graded in Australia and New Zealand by Government graders, and sold by auction, as wool is sold, and insurance againsl damage (except at sea) thus made unnecessary, buyers buying with all faults. 5. The circuitous ro.ite that colonial food products have to travel between the producer and the consumer should be shortened, the army of middlemen reduced in number, and the cost of transport and handling greatly lessened. 6. The advantages. to the consumer from the care, inspection, and grading at the source of production insisted on by Government's should be energetically advertised. and deception by dealers should be put down or circumvented. 7. Thp future of Australia and New Zealand alike in their prospects and dangers, lies hi the Pacific. Because they are isolated from the great markets of the world, and largely ignored cheap transport is the breath of life to them, and because competition in transport is dead and combination is very much alive, they should build ships of their own for the exploitation of new markets for thoir food products on the great Pacific coasts.

and prefer to sink their huge mail subsidies in losses (if these were inevitable, ai;d they are not), rather than enrich powerful shipping combines who give them a fitful, expensive, and wholly insufficient service "