RATIONING OF MEAT

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24900, 13 June 1946, Page 6

RATIONING OF MEAT

... EFFECT ON CONSUMPTION IN N.Z.

EVIDENCE IN WELLINGTON (P.A.) WELLINGTON, June 12. Figures to show by how much the meat rationing system had reduced consumption were quoted by Neil Lawson Douglas, officer in charge qi the meat section of the food control office, in the Magistrate’s Court, Wellington, to-day. while giving evidence in the hearing of rationing charges against Thomas Howard Jarvis, a butcher. The witness said butchers had not recently proposed any change in the system. Jarvis is answering six charges of making misleading statements in a return for authority to acquire meat, one of “supplying rationed goods to an inspector without sufficient .coupons being tendered, and one of breaking a price order. The statements alleged to be misleading concerned the pro-, curing of meat that might be used in the manufacture of small goods. Mr W. F. Stilwell’. S.M., presided. The hearing was adjourned until June 24. Douglas said that in • the rationing of meat the 12 months* ended March 31, 1944, were regarded as the basic year. In that year 12.938 tons of meat were used in the Wellington district. In the fouowing 12 months 10,955 tons were used, a decrease of 1973 tons, in the first year of rationing. In the year ended March, 1946, consumption was 10.797 tons, which was 2131 tons less than in the basic year, so that 4104 tons had been withdrawn from consumption by rationing. To illustrate the Dominion position, the witness said that according to the Year Book 2421 b of meat was consumed a head a year between 1938 and 1941. The records of the food control office showed that the approximate consumption in the year ended March 31, 1946, was 1721 b a head, so that meat equal to a third of the Dominion’s former consumption had been withdrawn from consumption. Using average weights, about 20.000 tons had been withdrawn in the year ended March, 1945, and 26,000 tons in the following year.