MILK MARKET CONTROL

Northern Advocate, 28 October 1935, Page 2

MILK MARKET CONTROL

BRITAIN’S DIFFICULT TASK / —■— WHAT NEW ZEALANDER THINKS [Special to “Northern Advocate.”] NEW PLYMOUTH, This bay. A produce and shipping merchant, Mr j. R. Cruickshank, who has just returned from a visit to Great Britain said, when interviewed, that any body of men constituting a control board in New Zealand had a most difficult and exacting task in attempting to formulate regulations intended to apply to a market 12,000 miles distant, and any bodrd which assumes the responsibility of deflecting the ordinary channels of trade would assuredly have to face many difficulties. Mr Cruickshank said that England today was more or less in the throes of its milk marketing scheme, and opinions seemed to be sharply divided as to what ultimate benefit was likely to accrue to either producer or consumer. It was a stupendous job to try and bring the daily milk supply of 47,000,000 people into onq comprehensive scheme, and apparently the Milk Board was beginning to realise sdndething of the magnitude and far-reaching nature of its task. One unexpected effect of the board’s operations was the threatened disappearance of the farm cheesemaker, who, taking the line of least resistance forsook the cheese vat for the milk can.

Mr Cruickshank said that haying realised its mistake, the Milk Board, he understood, was now making strenuous efforts to win cheesemak6rs back to their own craft; offering increased payment as an inducement. “The Milk Marketing Board,” spid Mr Cruickshank, “also discovered that far more milk was going into cheese factories than the factories could profitably use. This, in turn, glutted the Home market with factory-made cheese. A Milk Reorganisation Commission had been set up, its function presumably being to bring, order out of the chaos created by the Milk Board.