THE MEAT TRADE

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2904, 17 October 1916, Page 8

THE MEAT TRADE

NO INCREASED PRICE YET

HOW THE CASH BUYERS WORK

There is a. hint in the last telegram received from the High Commissioner that tho Imperial Board of Trado doos not intend to pay so much storage in New Zealand as it paid last season on frozen meat. The amount paid for storage last year was very large, some £700,000, and.no doubt there were other storage charges to pay in. England. The telegram lias been interpreted as meaning that the board may be contemplating tho raising of tho price to bo paid to growers in New Zealand, but no information to this effect lias reached tho Government. It, would appear, however, that New Zealand farmers aro quite as much concerned about tho handling of their meat on the London market as about tho. price they receive for it here. Outsiders have been able to get control of New Zealand moat by taking full advantage of a clause in the agreement made between the Government and the meat companies here. This clause was intended to provide against the very thing it has now made easy. It was well understood that all of our meat would not _ always he needed for the Army, and in order to ensure that New Zealand meat might not altogether lose its hold on the market, and that it should not be snapped up by speculators and deverted from its ordinary channels of trade, tho companies stipulated that meat to bo placed on the market at Home should bo handed over to agents nominated by the shippers, in quantities proportionate to amounts shipped. For a time this clause worked well enough, and presumably New Zealand lamb was sold in much the same way as it was before the war. But so soon as it, was discovered that no lamb was being used for the Army, tlicn the Now Zealand market was open for exploitation. Big cash operators began to do business in lamb, at prices often well above those paid by the Government. These buyers would receive from the Government only the schedule rates, but in view of the certainty that their people would handle that lamb at Home, tliey could afford to pay more than the schedule rates. Also they have contrived to make such arrangements with some of the hieat companies that they are able to get most of tho space in works, and so the farmer in many districts has been unable to get his'stock through. In these districts not infrequently, it is slated, the farmers have heen compelled to sell to cash buyers at less than the Government schcdulo rates.- So the big operators are moving in the direction of capturing theNew Zealand market just as they have captured control of the meat at HomoThe one business is dependent on the other. It is no longer doubted that the big cash buyers of meat are really in most cases agents for somo Beef. Trust, under one or other of its many trading names, and the measure taken originally a s one precaution for the protection of the New Zealand producer has, in.fact, placed the producer at the mercy of. the trust, which has made full'use of its advantage. How to rescue the Nm Zealand meat trade from the tentacles of tho octopus is one of the tasks to which Mr. Massey has to set himself while in England. \ '