Milk Supply.

Thames Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 19664, 20 March 1936, Page 3

Milk Supply.

AUCKLAND CONTROL. POWERS UF COUNCIL. COMMISSION HEARS EVIDENCE. (Hy Telegraph . Picks Association;. AUCKLAND, March 20. The disputed clauses in the Auckland Metropolitan Milk Amendment Bill, deleted hy I lie Local Bills Committee of the House of Representatives jn October, were discussed by representatives of all branches of the industry at a sitting of the Executive Commission of Agriculture yesterday. Sir Francis Frazer presided and with him were Messrs. C. A. Duncan and David Jones. There was a large array of counsel and representatives of the various interests.

His Honor, in opening the sitting, said the purpose of Hie -Commission was to investigate the necessity for the disputed clauses as requested' hy the Minister for Agriculture for a report to the Government. The scope of the inquiry was strictly limited to those clauses.

Mr. J. B. Johnston, for the Milk Council, stated that the Council could not hope to reduce prices to consumers unless the existing uneconomic methods of supply were overcome and wider powers were given it. If the Council did not get the milk supply as a whole vested in it, it could not cope with the situation and would be up against a stone wall.

The view that if the four disputed clauses in (lie Bill were adopted it would be possible for the Milk Council to effect sufficient economies to pay the farmer more without increasing the cost to the consumers, was expressed by Air. A. C. Trousdale, a member of the Council, in the course of evidence. As representative of the producers he believed the one sound solution was to give the council sufficient authority to control and manage the milk from the farm to the consumer with power to establish a treating house and arrange- for factories to manufacture the surplus milk and cream into other dairy commodities.