A PROPER VIEWPOINT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 50, 2 March 1943, Page 4

A PROPER VIEWPOINT

yilE New Zealand Dairy Exporter expresses a proper view of the recent unhappy business which occurred in ‘Wellington, of selling bad eggs for good ones by the Internal Marketing Department. “It is surely significant of the ethical practices of a Government indulging in business, when the Minister, in a long explanation of the position, indicated that there was a way in which grocers could get bad eggs replaced, but made no explanation whatever of the highly immoral practice of a Government Department selling eggs under what amounts to most flagrant false pretences. Consumers were paying for ‘fresh’ eggs which weren’t fresh at all. Had grocers, prior to the days when the Internal Marketing Department took over the business, sold chilled eggs as fresh, they would have lost their customers in the first place, and rendered themselves liable to legal action in the second. But when apparently a Government takes control of business, ethics can go out of the window, and reprehensible tactics which it would have been the first to condemn in ‘private enterprise’ indulged in freely . . . It might be said that as this did not occur in the handling of dairy produce, it isn’t any concern of the industry, but that woidd be taking a very short view. A department which will indulge in what really amounts to fraudulent substitution, can hardly be expected to be over-scrupulous in its handling of other products, and the complaints of some small grocers that they daren’t raise objections because it will jam them out and refuse them supplies altogether. take on a fresh significance iu the light of the above.’’ The Exporter is controlled by the co-operative dairy industry, and it is to be congratulated upon its outspokenness and upon its breadth of view which enables it to see that it is eggs this month and butter and cheese next if these two products come under the same regime as now sells bad eggs for good ones.