I.—Bb

2

or 3001b. altogether. Thus, a farmer is allowed to kill I,loolb. a week, and distribute it through his district or any other. And it is likely enough that the next farmer, or any other farmers, may be .doing the same thing. Thus these farmers are allowed to kill meat for sale —not necessarily for consumption on their own farms, or we would not grumble. What is the use of us being sent to the slaughter-yards? What is the good of a little butcher being inspected who would be content to sell half that quantity of meat, when one farmer is allowed to sell treble the quantity without being inspected ? You are leaving the door open to a very strong abuse by this thing, because if a farmer is allowed to kill sheep and cattle, and has not to submit to inspection, there is nothing in the world to prevent that farmer creating and making a trade of that kind. It sounds too risky that any farmer should take a beast to the public sale-yards, where he would run the gauntlet of Inspectors. He would go to those farmers in his own district, and he would say, " If you can give me a little less—say, £1 10s. or £I—then I will say no more about it."—l think this shows it is so contrary to common-sense that I do not think we shall have any difficulty in getting that erased. We do not wish to prevent the farmer killing for himself. We butchers in Canterbury had ourselves brought some time ago under an Act of the Selwyn County Council, whereby, our slaughterhouses being inspected, we are to pay a fee which the farmer does not have to pay—viz., 3d. per head for all our large cattle, 3d. per dozen for small, and we have also to pay £1 a year for a license, to find fences, drainage, water-supply, and all the rest of it, and in all these things we had this Act to protect ourselves, so that a farmer should sell not even a quarter of mutton, but might kill a sheep, and if he could not get through the whole, he could lend it, or give it away to other people; and they have, by doing the above, got over difficulties in hot weather, &c. This Bill as it stands will be responsible for making the farmer a competitor. We prevented this in Selwyn, where the farmer is confined to killing his own meat, and not selling it without all these precautions and inspections. The next thing I would like to refer to is clause 15, subclause (1). I ask you to strike out the whole of the subclause. My hands are very much strengthened with regard to this clause, because I have before me an extract from the Lyttelton Times bearing on the subject, from which I will read to you a few of the salient details. In plain words, we wish, if there are to be abattoirs built in any locality, that they shall be abattoirs, and abattoirs only, for the use of the butchers occupying that particular district. We wish to veto having the authority deputed to some other concern ■ —factory, or whatever you may like to call it—in the neighbourhood ; and having to go there to kill our stock, or, rather, having them to kill our stock, we do not wish that the premises should be under the control of any particular company or other.. We find that the meat companies both here and at Christchurch have already a very big power, if not almost a monopoly. We do not wish the meat companies to be allowed the privilege of killing our stock for us while we should be very much better otherwise. We feel we are in their hands, and we feel it would be a very unjust thing to give them more power and have to go to them, seeing that their competition with us is so great. They can swamp the town with their " rejects " —and you know how very little you have to give for rejects, but the poor butcher has to stand the worry and loss of the competition. The Christchurch City Council is very much with us in this question. At their last sitting the Chairman drew attention to the Inspection and Slaughtering Bill now before the House. The Bill, if passed in its present form, would, he said, hamper and restrict the Council, and, although they were compelled to work an abattoir, the Council would be prevented from deriving any revenue from it. The butchers held a meeting, and appointed Messrs. Hanson and Forrest to take the matter in charge. Subclause (1) in clause 15 we desire should be amended as follows : "In lieu of itself establishing an abattoir, a public authority may delegate to any fit person the power to establish the same, upon such terms and conditions as, with the previous approval of the Minister, are agreed on." We wish that to be struck out. We have struck out the whole clause. Clause 16 is something of the same kind. It is very much bearing on the subject we have before us. We have not come here, I believe —any of us—as delegates to act on the offensive in this matter. We leave the export meat companies to do exactly as they choose, but we do ask the same privilege for ourselves. We do not want to hamper them; we do not ask the privilege of slaughtering in their public slaughter-yards. We want to be independent entirely of any other factory or public slaughter-yard. I need not say anything more on that subject. 1. Mr. Wason.] You might explain why you want to strike out "human" for "local"?—We think that " human "is a far broader view. We think that " local " means simply in New Zealand. We have no desire to hamper the meaning of the word. We think it reads better "local." That is the only reason. In clause 18 we propose to strike out the last eight words—"and by the licensee thereof or his workmen." You will then read it, " Subject to the provisions of this Act relating to abattoirs and meat-export slaughterhouses, it shall not be lawful in any district to slaughter any stock for human consumption, or to dress any carcase for sale, except in a registered slaughterhouse." Perhaps the backward way of reading that is simply that we do not wish to be sent to these public slaughter-yards. It is very much the same subject again. 2. Mr. Brown.] Then the clause would stop at slaughterhouses?— Yes. 3. Mr. Wason.] I do not understand your objection to that, or why you strike out those words ?—I thought it was a short subject, and it had already been turned down by the section before. We want opportunity. If we have abattoirs we want to have the privilege of going there to some reason. We know very well that there are plenty of master butchers who can find work for the men in getting the meat ready in the morning, and in the afternoon they have to find time to do their killing. Otherwise we have nothing else to do but send our cattle to the public slaughter-yards; we cannot teach our sons and apprentices, and we are simply becoming meatsellers. We shall have nothing for our men to do in the afternoon. We want the right, in fact, of killing cur own meat. Mr. Buchanan: That is quite reasonable.