The Daily News. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1912. NEW ZEALAND PRODUCE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 155, 18 November 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1912. NEW ZEALAND PRODUCE.

We arc glad to lesirn from our cablegrams that the Empire Trade Commis sion will sit again in London after its tour of the Dominions to reconsider the evidence already given it in the light of its personal experience. We hope thai when the time arrives it will be able to devise some method of preventing our produce from being placed upon the Ifome and foreign markets under a false nomenclature. It is very complimentary, of course, to have our Canterbury mutton sold as ''best English," and our Taranaki butter .is "finest Danish," but this is only from one point of view, and we shall be much better oil' in the long run if the information which is being placed before the Commission on the subject will assist the Dominions' trade representatives in putting an end to the practice. The popular prejudice in the Mother Country against frozen meat is as widespread as it is foolish, as every colonial who goes Home with his eyes open speedily discovers for himself, and it is likely to continue as long as inferior qualities are sold under misleading descriptions, and the real "prime Canterbury" is merged in the local supply. The same thing applies to our butter and our I cheese. The effect of the present sys- j tem is to prevent the producers receiving the benefit of tho high prices which the consumers pay under the impression that

they are getting "Scotch" or "Welsh" mutton, or "Danish" butter, and to put an illicit profit into the pockets of some British merchants and retailers. Mr. Seddon said that the difficulty would ' have to be met by opening shops in the 1 large centres at Home, under Government supervision, and selling our choicest New Zealand produce direct to the consumers. But it is quite probable that this plan would fail, since the people whose delusions the Dominion wishes to remove would not become customers, and would continue to buy the same produce elsewhere at higher prices. Probably the best remedy is a bold advertising scheme, which might include some extensive entertaining by the High Commissioner. If the good people who regard colonial produce as fit only for the workers' cottage or the servants' hall were to meet it face to face in a fashionable restaurant in the genial company of the Hon. Thomas Mackenzie, they would probably very quickly revise their estimate. The High Commissioner could not, of course, "dine" all London, but lie might be easily able to convert a sufficient number of representative people to quickly remove the existing prejudice and incidentally attract the favorable attention of the newspapers. With Mr. Mackenzie exercising his talents and enthusiasm, and with the approval of the Trade Commission, we hope to see this aggravating misrepresentation speedily put an end to.