Rural slaughter-house move strongly attacked

Press, 26 April 1979, Page 2

Rural slaughter-house move strongly attacked

It was a case of “bureacracy gone mad,” said Mr K. Wells at Tuesday’s meeting of Federated Farmers provincial executive, when commenting on a recent statement that rural slaughter-houses had to justify their existence in the next two years or go out of business. If one case could be found where health had been affected by conditions at the slaughter-houses he might agree with the requirement, Mr Wells said. Not only did the small slaughter-houses help save fuel but they were also more efficient than larger operations, he said. Mr Wells suggested that one member of the staff at each slaughter-house be trained as a rural meat inspector and carry out inspection duties part-time.

One executive member asked that rural local bodies be asked to join the protests

o v e r the regulations affecting rural slaughterhouses. Rural towns could be badly affected by the closing of the slaughterhouses and the loss of jobs. The question of whether rural local bodies were getting their fair share of petrol and road-user taxes was also considered by the provincial executive. “The taxes being collected were not being put where they were originally designed to go,” said Mr W. T. Simpson, when he introduced a remit from the Springston branch.

Revenue from road-user charges and petrol tax were being siphoned off by the Government for the Consolidated Account when they were supposed to be used to improve the roads, he said. Because revenue from the taxes were distributed on a population basis, rural countries were not getting their fair share, Mr Simpson said. If petrol consumption dropped 10 per cent, the

Mayor of Christchurch (Mr H. G. Hay) has said the City Council would lose $lOO,OOO from their share of the taxes, he said. The Ellesmere County Council’s total revenue from the taxes did not equal Christchurch’s possible drop. The executive asked the Springston branch to do more research on the question and submit a remit to the provincial conference. Employment opportunities for farm cadets in Canterbury had improved slightly in the last few weeks. In a report to the executive, Mr Simpson said that only five cadets remained unplaced and 97 were now working in the province. A number of cadets had moved to Otago and Southland because of the greater number of jobs available. Federated Farmers will ask the Government to contribute $4O a week to the wages of farm cadets in their first year of employment, he said.