GLUT OF MEAT

Taranaki Daily News, 5 November 1932, Page 7

GLUT OF MEAT

SERIOUS BRITISH POSITION

’REVIVED WARTIME CONTROL’

PERIL OF NON-REGULATION

ALLEGED. SECRET TREATY

BOARD’S EMBARRASSMENT

By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. Rec. 11.40 p.m. London, Nov. 4

"The Government has decided to revive practically wartime control of the meat industry,” the Daily Express reports. “It will establish 22 public abattoirs, chill British beef like Argentine and control wholesale prices.” "Mr. Neville Chamberlain (Chancellor of the Exchequer) candidly admits the position in regard to meat has become worse since Ottawa, where a further fall in price was never expected,” says the Daily Telegraph. “The glut is mainly a Dominions’ glut, sincexthe imports from Australia and New Zealand alone rose from 4,394,000 cwt. in 1929 to 6,500,000 cwt. in 1931. For those living by raising stock, whether here or in the Dominions, these figures represent not plenty but ruin. Never fatal consequences of unregulated supply more vividly illustrated.”

“A eecret agreement between the British Board of Trade and South American meat exporters is causing the Government embarrassment,’’ says the Daily Herald. "The pact is to operate for IS months from the pew year. It has been' published at Buenos Aires. It permits the freight conference to import meat into Britain on the basis of the imports from Argentina for June, 1932. The firms concerned have already divided the spoils.”

The Sun states that Australian meat interests emphatically protest against attempts to raise tariffs against Empire produce, and contend that this is precluded by the Ottawa agreements. Tariffs alone cannot raise prices, which at present ■ are at bankruptcy levels, home-grown beef being 5d per pound, the lowest in living memory. New Zealand mutton at 2d a pound scarcely pays the cost of shipment.