DAIRY CONTROL.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue 148, 5 September 1928, Page 2

DAIRY CONTROL.

NEED OF ORGANISATION. (Per Press Association). PAHIATUA, Last night. There was some sharp eritiei-m at the annual meeting yesterday of the Rexdale Co-op. Dairy Co., eoin ~minir the Dairy Control Board. In reply to questions by Mr W. H. Ross, Mr E. J. G. Breehin agr 1 that the time had arrived for some definite action to he taken by the dairy fanners throughout the length mid breadth of the Dominion. There was not the slightest doubt in hi mind that the Dairy Produce Control Board had been raptured hv commercial interests of the Dominion. Their efforts had been assisted by the votei of a feyv individuals, who could not by any stretch of imagination be called representative of the dairy farmers, and had practically' made the operations of the Board of no more moment than if the Board did not exist.

The present Board yvas making much ado about nothing in trying to exist on the good work done while the dairy farmers controlled. The present position was intolerable, and it was a striking faet that even Ihe present chairman of the Board, Mr W. A. lorns, was not only not a chairman of a dairy company, hut no! even a director of one. CLASS OF BUSINESS.

As indicating the class of linsiness tlie Board was doing, Mr Brechin stated that quite recently the Board received an offer from the National Dairy Association of New Zealand and the South Island Dairy Association to continue to carry out the shipping of the dairy produce from all ports hut Wellington, the cost to be £200(1 per annum. The secretary of the Board had been requested to prepare an estimate of the cost if the Board carried out this work itself. His estimate was £3IOO per annum.

A eommitee of the Board was act up to report, the committee consisting of the chairman, a commercial representative and one other member, who previously had been anti control. Notwithstanding the report of the committee, members of the Board voted in equal numbers for and against the report, that the Board should take over the work at a higher cost. The voting was nR follows, said Mr Brechin, and he advised those interested in the operations of the Board to examine the names very carefully:—For work to be done at £2000: Messrs Grounds, Ferguson, Winks, Iline, Reynolds, Corrigan. For the expenditure of over £3OOO for the same work: Messrs lorn- Chapman, Hunt, Gimpany, Lee, Fulton. THE CASTING VOTE. The voting, therefore, was equal, and it was necessary that the chairman should use his easting vote. Mr lorns did this. In doing so he de parted from all recognised precedent by voting against the existing system, which also was the least costly for the industry. If it could have been shown that the work accomplished by the associations wan not up to the mark, then the chairman of the Board might reasonably have cad his vote as he did. but in view of the faet that he had already made laudatory- remarks, which the Board bad endorsed, upon the fine yvork accomplished bv the associations for the Board, he surely was not studying the dairy producers when he threw away over £IOOO of their money ty using his easting vote in the manner he did. Mr Breehin stressed the point that it was significant that Ihe “E 1" porter,” yvhich gives the dairy far®ers of the Dominion the official new* of the doings of the Board, did not mention the division on this matter of shipping, nor had a division 1® vet been published. The meeting unanimously r*' solved. “That in the opinion of thn meeting the matter of the continuation of the Dairy Produce Centra Board should be seriously consider* by the dairy industry as a whole, with a view to —(1) the eliminatin' 1 of the Act; (2) to drastically reviee its personnel, with a view to t“* members of the Board being wn'W representative of the dairy f" rn,e onlv.”