WHAT TO DO WITH MILK
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] • SIR,-,—Why_not repeal the legislation which makes it a criminal offence to sell cheap milk to poor people ? Section 6 [3] of the Agricultural Marketing Act 1931 provides that any producer who sells a regulated. product in contravention of a Marketing Scheme may be fined £200 by the Justices. That compels every producer to register under the Scheme. Under the Scheme itself any registered producer selling in contravention of the Scheme may be fined by the Board up to £100. Apart from other questions the scandal of a Board which is itself interested in every cause which comes before it, is both prosecutor and judge, and into whose own funds go the fines which it inflicts is sufficiently remarkable. But the effect is deplorable on the supply of milk to the poor.
There are great numbers of producers able and willing to sell at much lower prices than those maintained by the Board but who are prevented from doing so. The Board has terror- ised them. It boasts in its Report for the year ended March 31st, 1935, that it fined only 545 registered producers in that year, and that what it calls " evasion " was considerably less than in the preceding year. We need more and cheaper milk. Why are we, first to prevent those able and willing to supply it from doing so, and then buy it at an artificially high price out of the taxes and give it away free ?—Yours, &c.,
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