SIR,—Marketing Boards, of course, benefit the house- wife as well
as the farmer, and are not, as E. B. Anderson says, `anti-consumer' (Spectator, August 29). They benefit the housewife by lowering costs of distribution and by evening out undue seasonal price fluctuations.
Costs are lowered, for example, by rationalising the collection of produce. This keeps down transport costs. Again, the Boards, by constant vigilance, keep agents' commissions as low as is compatible with efficient distribution.
The other main aim of the Boards is to provide quality produce. For example, since the establishment of the Milk Marketing Board, the consumer has been assured of a safe and high-quality supply of milk. This Board will in future impose price penalties on producers whose milk has less than the standard butter-fat content, just as the Wool Marketing Board penalises producers of tarred wool.
In the case of eggs the housewife now has a properly graded and tested product, upon whose quality she can confidently rely.
One of the most important functions of a producer marketing board is to introduce some stability into what, by the very nature of things, is a hazardous occupation. By introducing stability, economy and efficiency of production are encouraged, and these inevitably benefit the housewife. No one is happier than the producer that this should be so. She is his customer and he depends for his living upon her good will.—Yours faithfully, [Leslie Adrian writes: 'I was not condemning marketing boards as such; they can be very useful. My objection is to handing them over to the producer, who runs them for his benefit, not the consumer's.
' "Constant vigilance," indeed! Mr. Brighton can- not have been reading the papers very carefully recently, or he would have seen that the Egg Board, so far from being vigilant, had let the packers get away with excessive profits to the tune of over a million pounds in a year. And to say that the house- wife can "rely" on the present egg is laughable: he cannot have met many London housewives recently.' —Editor, Spectator.]
Previous page
