FOOD CONTROL

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 123, 27 May 1942, Page 2

FOOD CONTROL

CRITICS IN BRITAIN MINISTRY'S SELLING RATES LONDON. The Ministry of Food has purchased the whole of the supply of fresh salmon from Eire at 4/ per lb whole fish. Their agents were selling it this week-end in the whole fish markets at 8/ and 8/6 per lb. Is this profiteering? asks a Daily Mail writer. I leave it to Lord Woolton to say. I am also interested to know why, if the Ministry can buy (and control) Irish salmon, the same system cannot be applied to Scottish salmon. This was fetching, uncontrolled, about the same price—a price that means that the fishmonger will have to charge you up to 11/ per lb for salmon steaks. This time last year a fair retail price would have been 6/ or 6/6 per lb; prewar, 3/. Certainly someone is making an excessive profit on this and other uncontrolled foods. Instances of the same kind abound in the wholesale vegetable markets. Here are some examples from Covent Garden:— Cornish broccoli, £1 for a case of 24 (last year, 14/); Savoys, 23/ to 28/ the half cwt (9/); Brussels sprouts, 8d per lb (2Jd); rhubarb, 7/6 per dozen bundles (3/6); seakale, 81b for 14/ (5/); forced mushrooms, 5/ and 6/ (3/3). Hard weather has made a scarcity. Kent and Lincolnshire green vegetables have almost completely failed. Supplies are likely to get worse than better. Still, here again, someone is making high profits. Covent Garden merchants to whom I talked say it is the growers. Prices ought to be lower, they said. But if maximum prices were fixed the result would be that none of this produce would come to London, and other big central markets. It would be sold locally to save rail charges. To which I reply that if rail rates were fixed at a flat rate irrespective of distance, this trouble would disappear and maximum prices could be fixed. Apart from this snag, illicit trading in these wholesale markets has greatly diminished. "Conditional sales," I was told, are almost a thing of the past. One other inquiry to the Food Ministry: Why have large quantities of Canadian apples been sold by the Ministry direct to certain large catering firms at £21 a ton—roughly a third of the full control price? Miss Aynsley Kerr has opened La Pompadour Salon, Park Road, Grafton opposite Nurses' Home. Owing to the impossibility to secure a telephone, [appointments through the courtesy of the 1 Royal Garage. Phone 40-291.—(Ad.)