OVERSEAS MARKETS

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1641, 14 May 1925, Page 8

OVERSEAS MARKETS

BRITAIN'S FOOD SUPPLIES.

COMMISSION'S INVESTIGATIONS

In the report of the British Food Prices Commission, of which a summary was cabled this week, there is a good deal that is of special interest to producers and Other people in this country. The ' commission was appointed: To inquire into the conditions prevailing in the wholesale and retail trades in articles of food of general consumption so far as they affect prices, particularly having regard to the difference between the prices received by producers and the prices paid by consumers, and to report what action, if any, can usefully he taken.

The report now made public deals with meat and wheat. The commission presumably will report later on the marketing of other foodstuffs. There are apparently good grounds for the opinion expressed by Mr Forsyth, London representative of the New Zealand Meat Producers' Board, that the report broadly will give cause for satisfaction so far as New Zealand is concerned. The commission finds that the operations of the board have not been an important factor in determining the higher average level pi mutton and lamb prices in Britain in the'last three years.. It is added that the board has succeeded in reducing the activities of speculators, but the commission cannot endorse the view that the operations of' the board "run counter to the general interests of British consumers in regard to the retail meat trade."

The facts implied in these observations so completely vindicate the measures taken in this country to regulate meat erports that they might well have been .stated in more positive terms. It is satisfactory, however, to nave the authoritative opinion of the commission that the New Zealand .Meat Producers' Board has reduced the activities of speculators without appreciably raising prices, and that its operations are not inimical to the interests of British consumers. As it bears on this matter, the report should do a good deal to allay! misunderstandings and abate suspicions with which the board has been 'regarded in some quarters in Britain. The broad effect of the report is to recommend measures of control, but not tate trading in meat or, other foodstuffs. Several of the detail findings and recommendations will strengthen an opinion that there are a number of directions in which such a body as the proposed Food Council might exercise a useful oversight.

Some of the recommendations are intended to establish safeguards against illicit speculation and profiteering. No doubt the group marketing organisations created here and in the Dominions would very readily co-ope-rate in judicious measures of! this kind.

Producers and their organisations in the Dominions certainly will be in full sympathy with any effective action taken against the buying rings which the commission says are commoner in Britain "than the witnesses suggested," and also with measures to enforce the fair and accurate marking of imported and other meat sold in Britain. The British Government no doubt will feel bound to redress t he condition of affairs disclosed in the commission's statement that imported meat is frequently sold as home-killed and that misdescription is also common in regard to different grades of imported meat. It is an old grievance with producers and exporters in this country that their trade has suffered some injury from inferior foreign meat being palmed off in Britain as "New Zealand." The matter is one in which the interests of British consumers are very obviously identified with those of Dominion producers, and it may be hoped that remedial action will be taken without further delay. As it bears on ; the question of encouraging an increased production of aaeat within the Empire, the report is a little vague. On the other hand, there is an explicit suggestion that it may be necessary for the British Government to consider the acquisition of a controlling interest in British companies operating in the Argentine, "or to adopt other means if the supply of chilled and frozen beef to Britain should be dominated by adverse trading combinations." Britain, no Joubt, will have to depend in part on foreign supplies of meat for a considerable time to come. The policy of acquiring a controlling interest in companies operating outside the Empire appears, however, to have much less to commend it than one of doing everything feasible to stimulate the production of meat "within the Empire. A searching investigation of the possibility of transporting chilled beef over long distances is particularly necessary from this standpoint.