BRITISH MILK INDUSTRY

Taranaki Daily News, 11 July 1933, Page 9

BRITISH MILK INDUSTRY

CRITICAL POSITION REACHED LOW PRICE OF IMPORTED CHEESE. DIVERSION FROM MANUFACTURING. MILK WAR AT GLASGOW RESULTS. The critical position into which the British milk industry has drifted during the last few months, attributed mainly to the low price at which imported dairy produce is selling, is told in articles in Glasgow papers received recently by Mr. A. Thorne. The difficulty of making cheese at a price which would compete with the imported article has resulted in large quantities of milk being diverted to use for house consumption and a fierce “war” has been raging at Glasgow. “Hundreds of women and children shouted, struggled and fought for almost an hour around two lorries in the Gorbals district of Glasgow for a share of 600 gallons of milk that were distributed free,” states the Bulletin. “Pandemonium reigned. Jugs and crockery were knocked from the holders’ hands and broken in the astonishing crush and scramble. Women were drenched with milk from upset pans and ewers and children were crushed and trampled. “The free issue of milk was the second distribution made by leading wholesale dairymen in Glasgow in the ‘war’ against price-cutting which broke out in the city the previous day. The large distributors have adopted this ofnn of reprisal on small retailers who are selling milk at. 3d and 4d per quart against the fixed price of 5d per quart. “HECTIC FORTY MINUTES.” “Crowds of bareheaded women in shawls gathered two hours before the lorries were due to arrive with the free milk. They were armed with jugs and crockery containers of every shape and hue. Shortly after 4 o’clock the steadily increasing throng was swelled by an army of school children carrying mugs and ‘tinnies.’ Suddenly word went round that the lorries had arrived in another street and the crowd, waving a forest of jugs and earthenware aloft, rushed into this thoroughfare and surged round the drays. “After a hectic 40 minutes the free supply gave out. The crowd, drawn from a wide area in the Gorbals and beyond, went away, many of them having failed to get near the lorries, but consoled with the intimation that another distribution Would be made.”

“The prieg cutting against which these renrisals have been taken,” says the Glasgow Herald, “is a symptom of the critical position into which the' British milk industry has drifted in the last few months. All milk that cannot be absorbed in the liquid market lias to be manufactured;, and the main product from it in Scotland is cheese. That means that the economic price of all milk that is surplus to liquid requirements is governed by the price ruling for imported cheese.

NEW ZEALAND FARMER ALSO HIT.

“The New Zealand farmer, who is the largest supplier of imported cheese, is just as badly hit as our farmers, though New Zealand has depreciated her currency in order to improve the return which her farmers get in our market. But when it is considered that it takes one gallon of milk to make one pound of cheese, that the manufacturing costs approach 2d per pound and that New Zealand cheese is coming 14,000 miles to se& in Glasgow shops at Gd per pound retail, it will be apparent that the net return on milk to the Dominion farmer is deplorably low. • & • “The winter price of milk in Glasgow, 6d per quart, is the lowest of any large city of Britain. But that price does not survive over the customary winter period. It was reduced to 5d per Quart in February, the lowest price reached in that month since the war. A retail price of 5d per quart means Is 8d per gallon (this amount to include delivery costs), and the dairy received 10d per gallon to cover both wholesale and retail distribution. . “These prices still stand nommally. Many farmers have complained that the lOd per gallon price exists only on paper. They asserted that dairymen were contracting at this price for only small proportions of the farmer’s output, knowing that the balance could be secured at a ‘surplus’ price level. So long as the effects of the crisis were confined to the producing side of the industry the position was nominally stabilised. “In the background, however, was the great supply of milk in the south-west of Scotland, for which creameries are paying only 3d and 3Ad per gallon at present. In these areas the practice at this season is to convert the bulk of the milk into cheese, but the price of imported cheese is so low to-day that creameries handling milk supplies, even at djd per gallon, would find it difficult to make cheese and to leave trading margins that would allow 'the cheese to compete with the imported article.”