POULTRY INDUSTRY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 August 1939, Page 8

POULTRY INDUSTRY

BURDEN OF THE SUBSIDY ON WHEAT. AN UNJUST IMPOSITION. (Contributed.) A question was asked in the House of Representatives last week relative to the Government subsidy to the wheat growers and the Minister who replied stated that the reason there was no amount in the Budget for that purpose was that sufficient profit had been made on the wheat imported from Australia during the last year. The sum he stated was £lBO,OOO. This £lBO.OOO is very largely contributed by the poultry keepers of this country. They may, or may not, be proud to learn that through their industry the consuming public gets cheaper bread and the miller and grower a living wage, but they might well question why one primary industry, and that one by no means the richest, should be saddled with this financial burden. The answer may be that they are such a disorganised and disunited body that no effective opposition need by anticipated. Many times during the last three or more years responsible bodies in the industry have questioned the equity of this charge on the poultry industry but the only advice received so far from the powers that be is to seek for a living standard through better marketing—in other words, higher prices for eggs. It seems a strange attitude for a Labour Government to take, for it really means: Let the consumer pay. Well, he is doing it just now. and likely to do so for some considerable time. Over one thousand registered poultry keepers have gone out of the business since last year. It seems to me only right and due to the keepers of poultry that the consuming public should know why the price of eggs is so high for the season of the year and (later) why they continue to be so abnormally high. It looks as if the time will very soon come when wo in New Zealand cannot supply the eggs required by the public, greatly reduced though the quantity will be. I suppose our Government will then import eggs from Japan (in China).