Notes of the Day.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3562, 29 June 1912, Page 6

Notes of the Day.

A REMARKABLY CANDID ADMISSION. The recent proposal by tlie Commonwealth Government to introduce a system of meat branding is meeting with a good deal of opposition. Neither growers nor merchants, it would seem, like the project. And why? This, for instance, is what the Pastoralists’ Review, which is a very influential journal has to say on the subject. “It (the proposal),” it remarks, “is one of the many ill-ad-vised suggestions which from time to time come from the Government. The whole idea is the result of a misconception of the actual state of affairs prevailing in Great Britain, and this again is another instance of the remarkable lack of knowledge of matters of importance on the part of the Prime Ministers and his advisers. It is not. as they imagine, that the meatconsumers of Great Britain are hungering for Australian meat. They are not. If in consequence of their ignorance they eat Australian meat under the impression it is British, New Zealand, or Argentine, so much the better, and the authorities her© ought to be pleased. It would, of course, be different if the quality of Australian meat were equal or superior, there would then perhaps be some reason for the anxiety displayed by the Commonwealth Government to earmark the Australian article. As it is, however, the branding of our meat under present conditions would be distinctly unwise, and would only have the effect of drawing special attention to it, possibly to its detriment. Apart altogether from this aspect of the matter, there is the even still more important one of the prejudice to frozen meat that still exists in the minds, of people of Great Britain, unreasonable as tins prejudice may be, and even Australians themselves are just as prejudiced, there it is, and it must be always regarded as an adverse factor in the frozen meat trade, so much so in fact that there is no need for the Federal Government to foster it- by branding the Australian article.” Surely this, is a very candid admission, and incidontaaly a compliment ns to the quality or txie meat grown in this Dominion .