WILL BE PROSECUTED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 December 1943, Page 3

WILL BE PROSECUTED

t BUTCHERS BREAKING LAW BY DISREGARDING PRICE ORDER. STATEMENT BY MINISTER OF SUPPLY. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. “By recommending retail butchers to disregard the Meat Price Order the New Zealand Master Butchers’ Association is advocating a breach of the law,” said the Minister of Supply (Mr Sullivan). “I am surprised that such a statement should have been issued by the Butchers’ Association. It should be clearly understood that butchers found breaking the price order will be prosecuted immediately. “To the consumer,” the Minister added, “the immediate effect of the butchers’ proposed action would be an increase in the retail price of beef. Meat is one of the most important items in the family budget and for this reason its price has been and must remain stabilised. The present trouble, about which there has been much controversy, arises from the fact that butchers, particularly in the South Island, have been paying high prices for fat stock—prices much higher than the basic wholesale rates on which the price order is based. Those basic wholesale rates for the summer /ire in line with the export price schedule and for the winter they make allowance for the extra cost of fattening. It is a .fact that during certain months of the year it is normal for butchers to pay relatively high prices, but they judge results over the whole year’s trading and not merely on the two or three most difficult winter months. In any case it needs to be emphasised that butchers are the main buyers of fat stock at the auctions, where the prices realised are determined generally by limits to which they are prepared to bid in competition with one another. As an association, butchers are able to remedy this position. The fact that prices at* auction can be controlled to a reasonable dfegree by the butchers themselves was illustrated recently at the Burnside Market, where a butchers’ buying committee successfully operated in buying the Dunedin butchers’ requirements. Thus, by co-operation within their own ranks, a remedy is available to the butchers which does not involve breaking the law, and which will not act to the detriment of the community in general.”