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Otago Witness, Issue 3743, 8 December 1925, Page 3

At the meeting of the Otago Provincial Executive of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union on Tuesday a report on the question of adopting new methods in connection with the sale of farmers’ fat stock was presented by Mr E. H. Murney. The latest proposition in regard to this matter, said Mr Murney, was, in effect, that the stock should be killed at the freezing works nearest to the farm, and despatched to a cool store in Dunedin, where it would be sold, preferably by auction, in lots of, say, 20 carcases of sheep, with the option of one. The originators of the scheme thought that it would be necessary to charge a commission per lb on the stock sold and that the skins and offal should be the property of the grower, but that the body handling the meat should sell them on his account. The scheme would cover every class of meat coming into the city. The speaker asked that a small committee should be set up to go into the matter. The formation of a company to build a cool store would be necessary. A lot of details would have to be gone into, and the matter was one which they did not want to hurry along. He did not think the consumers would pay more for their meat—they would probably pay less—and the growers would get better value for their stock than they were getting at present. In reply to questions Mr Murney said he thought that a capital of £25,C00 would bo roquired for the proposed company, but that estimate was only a wild guess. If they got 20 or 25 per cent, of the stock now going to Burnside the venture would be a success. A committee, consisting of the president (Mr F. Waite), and Messrs Murney, Revie, and Preston, was .set up to go further into the matter, and was given power to add to its number.

An entirely novel, if somewhat difficult method, of regulating the speed of motor cars was propounded by 1 the chairman of the Bruce County Council (Cr T. Scott), at the council’s meeting on Tuesday. Various suggestions had been brought forward as to the best method of mitigating the motorspeeding nuisance within the boundaries of the otunty, and after it had been stated by one councillor that as far as he could see nothing could be done, Cr Scott rose to his feet. “If I had my way,” he said, “I would screw every one of their engines down till they could not do more than 20 miles an hour.”

In the course of a discussion on the question of organisation at a meeting of tho Otago Provincial Executive of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union on Tuesday one of the speakers expressed the opinion that tho result of the recent general election was the worst knook the union had received for a long time from a membership point of view. Tlie farmers were so well satisfied with the result that they would not realise the necessity for organisation. If a Labour Government hod been returned there would have been no difficulty in the way of securing organisation amongst the farmers.