DISASTROUS OVERLAPPING

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19032, 9 June 1924, Page 4

DISASTROUS OVERLAPPING

Whether the above accounts for South Canterbury’s supremacy or not, the Fanners ’ Weekly accepts the facts as proving that the legitimate functions of the various freezing works have been disastrously overlapping. It is, it says, very obvious that cost of collecting stock from places remote from the works, in which it is to be slaughtered, is by no means inconsiderable; that it is so great as to seriously add to the amount lost between producer and consumer. Tens of thousands of first grade carcases are rendered second grade by rough handling and otherwise bruising, while thousands do actually become rejects. In view of the fact that this overlapping destroys the market value of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of the animals produced for export, the journal appeals to the Government and to the Meat Control Board to evolve some scheme whereby this wastage of what comes from the country’s farms may be eliminated. If it is not practicable, or possible, to prevent fat, or freezing stock from being deliberately shipped, railed, lorried or driven past one freezing works to another a hundred or more miles away, then, it says, let the proposed merger come without any unnecessary waste of time. The point most strongly urged by the Farmers’ Weekly, however, is that whatever plan may be eventually adopted for rescuing farmers from the vortex of waste in which they are whirling to loss and ruin, it is imperative that it should provide for suppression of the practice of transporting stock past one or more freezing works for disastrously unreasonable distances. It is equally imperative that there should Ibe complete realisation of the fact that New Zealand has to contend with a new and powerful competitor for her best meat markets. It is also imperative that competition for fat stock should be increased rather than weakened. It is not suggested that enterprising firms who carry on a legitimate business in complete accordance with law should be harassed, or that the competition they furnish should be limited. Every buyer should have a free course, except that none should be allowed to pass one freezing works because of personal preference for another.