MEAT RATIONING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 October 1943, Page 3

MEAT RATIONING

DECIDED ON IN AUSTRALIA IN ORDER TO INCREASE BRITISH SUPPLIES. GENERAL PUBLIC APPROVAL. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, October 21. The Prime Minister, Mr Curtin, announced that the system of meat rationing for civilians would be introduced next January. The main reason why meat must be rationed to civilians, he said, was that the total local and Allied demand for Australian meat was in excess of the available supply, and it was necessary to ensure that the reduced quantity available to civilians was distributed in the most equitable and practicable manner. The trend of public opinion in the Commonwealth has been strongly in favour of reduced home consumption of certain vital foods so that increased supplies may be sent to the Unitea Kingdom, The Melbourne “Herald strongly advocates that Australia's meat consumption of 61b a head weekly should be cut by half in order that Britain’s “semi-starvation” ration of 1 lb. a head a week might be supplemented. The paper states that shipping space is available for the dispatch of primary produce to the United Kingdom, and it deplores the fact that there should be any defence of unrestricted meat consumptionin Australia when “our kinsfolk in Britain are seriously threatened with under-nutrition.” Already plans have been announced for greatly increased Australian food production next year. The meat goal is 1,180,000 tons—a record output. The target for butter production has been fixed at 175,000 tons, and for cheese 45,000 tons. These latter figures represent an increase of 10 per cent in whole milk production.