COMING SCRAMBLE FOR MEAT.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 January 1920, Page 5

COMING SCRAMBLE FOR MEAT.

"SITUATION FULL OF MENACE." AMERICAN PACKER'S' MONOPOLY. GOVERNMENT SUPERVISION SUGGESTED. (Otago Daily Times Correspondent.) London, Oct. 30. The problem of food supplies in the months ahead presents very serious ditliculties, and in one respect—that of meat supplies—a situation already "full or menace is made more menacing by the fact that a great meat trust is ready to exploit the position to its advantage." Such was the main purport of a speech delivered at Loughborough by Mr. McCurdy, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food, replying to the statement of the Miners' Federation that the action of the Government nad failed to restrict the upward trend of the cost of living, but lie said quite plainly that tfioj-e was no prospect of any great fall in prices. The most that can be hoped . for is the stabilisation of prices and their maintenance at a reasonable level, and to secure this end some forni of Government control would be necessary—a control taking the form of supervision rather than interference.' . The future sources of food supply for Great Britain have yet to be established. The rest of Europe -will come into the market as a competitor for meat imports, and the exportable surplus supplies of New Zealand, Australia, South America, and South Africa are barely sufficient to meet our own needs. The result, is that a scramble is inevitable "if Europe has any money next year to buy food." WORLD SHORT OF MEAT. "Do not imagine," said Mr- McCurdy, "that the United States or South America, or all existing resources of the British Empire, are sufficient for our future needs, or that a policy of Free Trade and laissez faire will pull us through. It will not. Already in MU the home production of beef and mutton in the United States was insufficient for home consumption. If we take all kinds of moat produced in the United States the figures suggest that the United States will in a reasonable number of rears cease to he an exporting country and. be a competitor with us for supplies from other countries. Turning to principal European countries, apart from Russia, wc find an annual conof ten million tons of meat before the war, of which not more than 2r>0,000 tons was imported. But the war has greatly changed this state of all'airs, and the live stock of Europe have been reduced by a third. For some years Europe will need to import far larger quantities of meat if its people are to be properly fed." SPECULATIVE PROFITEERING. "Before the war this country imported a million tons of meat and bacon every year, and home supplies amounted to eleven million tons. Supplies of home pi.as and sheep are down, and we shall want to import more than a million tons next year, and the rest of Europe -will want three million tons. There will not be enough meat in the wld available to supply the needs of Europe next year. All the exportable surplus meat from Australia, New Zealand, South America, and South Africa will together amount to no more than 1,200,000 tons—a total barely sufficient to meet the needs of the United Kingdom alone, to say nothing of A scramble for meat imports seiyjis inevitable. It is a situation full of menace, and made more menacing by the fact that a great meat trust is ready to exploit the position to its advantage. A monopolistic group of North American packers already controls a large part of the surplus meat supplies of the world. A food shortage of this kind, in the absence of control, must lead to speculative profiteering' on a very disturbing scale." " TO STABILISE SUPPLIES. Mr. McCurdy added that high prices were an evil, but that fluctuating prices —rapidly rising and falling—would be productive of far worse consequences to our national life. The main problem of food control for the next few years would be to stabilise supplies and maintain a reasonable price level. Therefore some kind of Government control, not too rigid, would be necessaiy. Compulsory powers cannot be dispensed with, but the need for their exercise should become less frequent as the situation is more generally understood.