MASTERTON ABATTOIR.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3018, 14 October 1908, Page 5

MASTERTON ABATTOIR.

KILLING FOR OUTSIDE FIRMS. A QUESTION OF FEES. A meeting of a special committee appointed by the Masterton Borough Council, to report upon the proposal to kill for the Carterton Bacon Company, and consisting of Crs Ewington, Morris and Pauling (in the chair) met on Thursday last. The Committee, on the understanding that the Company enter into an agreement with the Council, so as to bring the Abattoir" Bye-laws into operation upon them, and upon their guaranteeing to bring at least 1,500 pigs to the Abattoir for killing by the Manager during the first twelve month?, recommended to the Council that the work be undertaken at the price of one shilling and ninepence per carcase, such price to include all the usual services and placed in trucks. To facilitate such work, the Committee recommended that £SO be expended on alterations and additions to pig yard; that £25 be expended on a tram line for conveying carcases to trucks;, that £l2 be exnended on tar-paving the yard in front of Abattoir; that £5 be expended to provide a shelter on cattle pen fence; that an application be preferred to the Railway Department for permission to place :i portion of the proposed tram line on railway ground, for a distance of about eighteen feet, bo as to connect to existing Abattoir siding; that the cost of obtaining such permission be charged, as well as the estimated cost of £92, to Abattoir revenue. The revenue derivable from killing 1,500 pigs at Is 9d amounted to £l3l ss, and the Manager that no additional cost for labour will' be incurred by undertaking the business. This report was considered by the Council last evening, when Mr B. Rayner attended on behalf of the Company, and stated that u3 the Company could not be certain of its supply, it could not see its way to guarantee 1,500 pigs. The utmost they could guarantee was 1,000, unless the 1,500 was spread over, say, two years. Cr Pauling said that it would mean that if only a thousand pigs were killed the works would sustain a loss of a few pounds on the .first year's working. Certainly there would be some permanent work carried out, but he thought the present offer was a good enough one, seeing that the price to be charged was 9d per animal lower than the fee to local butchers. Cr Pragnell pointed out that the lowering of a fee to an outside firm would mean that local butchers would demand a reduced fee too, and their claim would have to be entertained. Cr Hunter said it was a different matter with local butchers, who collectively only killed about 1,000 per jear, and were not prepared to guarantee any number at all. Crs Ewington, Elliott, Prentice and Morris were in favour of lowering the minimum number of pigs to be killed by the company to 1,000, on condition that the company guaranteed to get dll its killing done at the works, and an amendment to the report in this direction was carried on a division. The Mayor said that he thought the price to be charged to the Company was really very low, and some of the difficulty which the minority of the Council foresaw might be got over if the price were raised to 2s per head. Cr Ewington pointed out that the Company only paid that amount now for its killing, and for that price it also received other advantages, which would mean that it would not accept the Council's offer at all. An amendment that the price to Le charged the Company be ,2s was moved by Cr Haughey, but was lost on a division, the Mayor and Crs Pauling, Pragnell, and the mover being in favour of it, and Crs Prenice, Ewington, Morris, Hunter, and Elliott against it. The report was then adopted.