FROZEN MEAT TRADE

Taihape Daily Times, 18 December 1917, Page 5

FROZEN MEAT TRADE

SIR GEORGE CLIFFORD ON TRUSTS “The air has been full oT public amj private surmises and disesusions upon, the so-called Meat Trust, and I may bo expected to refer to them,” said Sir George Clifford at the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company’s meeting held recently. “Our withers arc unwrung,” he w r enfc on to say. “Frozen meat we neither buy nor sell, nor fat stock for conversion into it. Therefore, being under no suspicion, we may speak freely. As is well known, we freeze for all and sundry so long as we have space available. We have not come in contact with an operation which we can identify as a meat trust; that is, a combination to corner the meat market by driving out competitors preparatory to an ultimate depression of prices for its own aggrandizement. There seems, on the contrary, a helathy rivalry quite dangerous to the rivals themselves. There was, he admitted, an underlying dread of the trust ’s existence, based on facts known to all, and of which no catisfactory or intelligible explanation had been forthcoming. The harm of inflated prices was not always obvious to the receiver of them, but thpy brought an inevitable reaction, apart from calculated greediness of a trust. I cannot honestly affirm that any trusts are' in existence or in contemplation in this country. Argentine experiences certainly suggest the possibility of danger. I do, however, claim this, that the C.F.M. Company has during its long and consistent career stood between this peril and the farmers of Canterbury. ”