THE DISPOSAL OF BUTTER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21989, 26 June 1933, Page 6

THE DISPOSAL OF BUTTER

The desire on the part of some producing interests to create controlling authorities, which shall regulate the disposal of their products, seems to amount almost to a passion. There are boards already in existence for the purpose of controlling the exportation of meat, dairy produce, honey and fruit. An effort that was lately made to establish a board which should act similarly in relation to the exportation of eggs was defeated only through the rejection by the Legislative Council of the Bill that proposed this step, A board exists to control the disposal of wheat in the Dominion. It has been seriously proposed that a wool marketing board should be brought into being, and the National Dairy Conference, which is a North Island organisation, has now given its support to a plan for stabilising the price of butter that is sold in the local market in New Zealand. This latest plan is one which aims, tinder the guise of stabilisation, at regulating the price of butter. A recentlyelected member of the Dairy Control Board has described the scheme as one of obtaining from the consumers in New Zealand a higher price than the commodity is worth. There is no apparent reason for disagreeing from the construction which is thus put on the Sinclair plan, as it is called. It, is a plan for placing the whole of the agencies that are employed in the distribution of butter under restraint, as all their operations would be subject to control on the part of the central organisation which would be set up if the scheme were adopted, and this organisation would determine the wholesale price that should be charged throughout New Zealand from time to time. The inevitable effect would be that the price of butter sold over the counter would be raised above that which it would realise under any uncontrolled system of marketing. In other words, it seems to be a form of exploitation that is proposed. The plan is, therefore, one in which the public as a whole is clearly concerned. Schemes ,

that are directed to the exploitation of the masses of the people in the interests of any particular section have not the degree of merit that may be claimed in this board-ridden country for organisations which, inasmuch as their purpose is to organise effectively the overseas disposal of exportable produce, may be considered to be necessary evils. ">