POULTRY PROBLEM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 October 1941, Page 6

POULTRY PROBLEM

SNAGS IN PRICE-FIXING. Nothing I have heard or read dispels the conviction that the egg-order is a gigantic blunder which Lord Woolton, the British Food Minister, will still have the courage to cancel. That it will result on a large scale in the killing of laying fowls for food, and a consequent diminution of the egg supply, seems certain, notes “Janus’ in the “Spectator.” Take one. case with which I happen to be familiar. A resident in the heart of the country has something over 80 poultry. To avoid struggles with bureaucracy, the owner proposes to reduce his flock to 50, for it is only above that figure that the order applies. Consequently various local families whom he has been supplying will be supplied no longer. Two days later I asked another friend how many poultry he now had. “I’ve; reduced them to 48,” he answered. What had he done with the rest? “Killed them.” In yet another case a local farmer has got rid of .the whole of his 500 odd birds. If they all went on laying for other owners no harm would be done, but many will unquestionably be killed for the table. The price of dead poultry is fixed, but anyone is apparently free to buy a live one at What price he likes and kill it, or have it killed, himself. Altogether. Lora Wooltofl seems to have set Britain well on the road to egglessness.