Abstract
THE written evidence submitted to the Lucas Committee on the Marketing of Agricultural Produce by Mr. Thomas Shaw, on which that Committee largely based its recommendations for setting up a system of marketing for meat when the present rationing scheme and control by the Ministry of Food ends, has now been published, together with a foreword by Dr. John Hammond (from the author, Bretten-ham House, Lancaster Place, London, W.C.2). Insufficient attention has yet been given to the recommendation that producer marketing boards should continue to function only up to the point of procurement where the guaranteed price under the Agriculture Act applies, and that any participation in the functions of processing and marketing beyond that stage should fall within the ambit of a national slaughterhouse board or commission. Mr. Shaw‘s evidence details clearly the measures which the livestock industry most needs for efficiency, including complete reorganisation of the existing slaughterhouse set-up, utilization of all by-products and elimination of unnecessary profit margins, grading, division of poorer quality meats from the fresh, the manufacturing market and measures to mitigate seasonal variations in supplies. The proposed public corporation would be given powers to approve central factory abattoir schemes ; to determine the terms and conditions under which such schemes should operate ; to operate grading services at the abattoir and a price-governing formula ; to authorize public funds required to implement the Government guarantee of prices, and linking that guarantee with qualities of the product ; to make levies covering the cost of administration and the finance of industrial research in connexion with the abattoir ; and to make loans to central factory abattoir schemes. The scheme, which is intended to lead to the effective closing of the wide gap between producer and consumer prices, to relieve the State in increasing measure of its financial liability under the terms of its guarantee and lay the foundations for an efficiently operating home meat industry, has thus features in common with the development councils to be established under the Industrial Organisation and Development Act, 1947, as the functions listed for the New Cotton Board, the first of such councils to be established, clearly shows.
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Marketing Agricultural Produce. Nature 161, 470 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/161470b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/161470b0