“NO MEAT TRUST.”

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3350, 1 December 1919, Page 5

“NO MEAT TRUST.”

CI.-lICAGO PACKER’SVTRIBUTJ*J T 0 FOOD MINISTRY. Mr R. H.‘Calbell, the 111.mag:_'in.g director in London of thegreat Chicago packing firm, Armour and Co., told a Morning Post. representative on September :23 that when the British people come to count up the assea that‘ enabled them to win the «er: they ought to give a very high place to the Ministry of Food. To have built up out of nothing a Government Department that has found itself capable of conducting what is perhaps the most detailed and complex business in the world Was to his mind the mast re-4 markable of the many proofs the last few years had furnished of the British‘ genius for organisation. ‘ Asked about the American Meal: Trust, Mr Cabcll said an appalling amount of misapprehension prevailed in Great Britain about the American packing industry.’ “For instance, it is the commonest thing to find the ‘Big_ Five’ described’ in the British newspapers as ‘the Kfijgrican Meat Trust’ is- simply a _figment of the imagination. The ‘Big Five’ a're.,..wholly indeywndent concerns. They“ b“ily against «me. an‘ other; they sell against oneianother; they are competitors from the Word ‘go’; they have their own plants, their own directors, their own organisations, and methods, and they watch one another and fight one another as business rivals do all the world over.” Last year, he said, the Chicago packers delivered to the ‘American. Government and to the Allicd*GoVerll- - nearly £5'0,000,000 of food pro~ ducts. There was scarcely a Word of complaint as to the quality, and not one word of criticism on the ‘efficiency of the service.