MEAT TRADING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 December 1943, Page 4

MEAT TRADING

DECISION OE DOMINION MASTER BUTCHERS DISREGARD OF PRICE ORDER. NO CONTROL OF PURCHASE RATES. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. A recommendation that retail butchers throughout New Zealand disregard the price order which fixes the retail price of meat and adjust prices in accordance with ruling market or wholesale prices, was made at a representative meeting of the New Zealand Master Butchers’ Association, held in Wellington yesterday. The recommended adjustment is in order that retail butchers may obtain the same unit of profit as ruled on September 1, 1939. “Retail butchers have been at their wit’s end lately because of the unfairness of Price Order 98, which fixes the retail price of meat,” said Mr Mountjoy, Dominion Secretary of the Master Butchers’ Association, in commenting today on the outcome of yesterday’s meeting. “The price order gives no consideration whatever to retail butchers for any increases in the purchase of stock or meat above 36s pet lOOlbs. Ever since the first meat price order was brought into force by the Price Tribunal, retail butchers throughout the Dominion have been discontented and dissatisfied with the conditions laid down in the price order. While the order fixes the retail price of meat to the general public, it does not fix the price of stock or the wholesale price of meat to the retail butcher, and with the fluctuations that have taken place owing to the shortages of beef available, retail butchers have for many months past been compelled to sell beef at a direct loss.”