DANGEROUS POLICY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 December 1938, Page 8

DANGEROUS POLICY

CONSTITUTION OF EMPIRE MEAT COUNCIL ACCORDING TO BOARD MEMBER. VIEWS OF MR J. D. ORMOND. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, December 6. A strong warning that participation in any such body as an Empire Meat Council, as suggested at the British 1 Empire Producers’ Conference, held in Sydney this year, would be extremely dangerous was given by Mr J. D. Ormond, a member of the Meat Producers’ Board, when addressing farmers at the Canterbury lamb export competition in Belfast today.

Mr Ormond said that an obvious re* suit would be that other Dominions producing meat would insist on taking some of New Zealand’s large share of the British market.

“The question now is how much of our meat will Great .Britain take,” said Mr Ormond. “It was suggested earlier this year that an Empire Meat Council should be formed, but if that happens it will be very serious for NewZealand, with its unique position on the London market. Other Dominions will immediately want some of our trade, and it will be a very serious thing if New Zealand is forced into any such council.” Mr Ormond said that though there were very many problems for the Meat Board to face, the position was not as gloomy as some people imagined. The dark future that many felt was ahead of meat producers would not necessarily eventuate. The Minister of Finance, Mr Nash, had reached a trade agreement with Canada which gave hopes for an expanded meat trade with that country, and the recentlyarranged Anglo-American trade treaty also gave hopes that there would be an expanding market for Empire meat in the United States of America. A further influence was the development of the chilled beef trade, which had induced many North Island farmers to cease growing lamb in favour of beef, thus relieving the market for districts more suitable to mutton and lamb production. The recent holdup of meat cargoes on the Auckland waterfront was described' by Mr Ormond as serious, because it had held the first of the newseason’s supplies of New Zealand meat off the London market for a week.

“If we are to continue to have, troubles of that sort,” he said, “there is only one way out of it. We will have to establish cool stores on the wharves and develop some form of mechanical loading.” .