FAMINE AND PLENTY

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 12, 9 October 1943, Page 4

FAMINE AND PLENTY

Of all food commodities, one which should be in abundance in this country is fish. It is true that in the last two years of war the commandeering of large trawlers for defence purposes, together with restrictions placed on fishing in special areas, has hampered the harvesting of food from the sea. It is true also.that the fishing industry, like other industries, has been depleted of skilled manpower. 3 aking these facts into consideration, however, it has to be said that the fishing industry—reduced as it has been, by lack of encouragement from State departments in control of manpower and other essential priorities, to the status of an industrial Cinderella, and hedged about with a multitude of Regulations—has made probably the poorest showing against wartime adversity of any important productive enterprise. As the position stands, the public are the sufferers in a needless famine. During the past year or so a system of discrimination in the allocation of fish supplies, during frequent periods of particularly acute scarcity, seems to have been introduced. In Wellington this week, for example, it was reported that certain supplies of fish could be sold at auction only to restaurant and hotel-keepers.. Other supplies apart from those very properly reserved for hospitals and similar institutions —may have found their way to favoured consumers,, but the rank and file of retail buyers were again denied fresh fish. Friday after Friday (the big buying day of the week) the position has been the same. In a country girt by a multitude of fishing, giounds a country wherein the need for conservation of other foods is constantly being urged—the fish supplies, so far as the bulk of the. public are concerned, have been permitted to dwindle to vanishing point. The situation smacks of incompetence and official lethargy. An important detail of the national productive effort is being skimped or bungled From time to time members of the trade have stated that the Government is directly at fault. An anonymous merchant is reported as having asserted that “the situation would be relieved at once if the Government were to release one of the deep-sea trawlers and allow a free auction market.” The true extent to which official regimentation and control is handicapping the industry, should be measured. There should be an examination of the practical opportunities which may exist for relieving a scandalous shortage by the encouragement of healthy individual enterprise an entei prise which become Dart O.f feejoroaumme of soldier