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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 27 Nov 1940

Vol. 81 No. 5

Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Weighing of Pigs.

asked the Minister for Agriculture if he would take up with the Pigs and Bacon Marketing Board the question of having the curers' weighbridges at the customary pig markets established by them throughout the country reopened for the weighing of pigs, as the present arrangements for the weighing of pigs at the factories on the following day are working out very unsatisfactorily for the feeders and if persisted in will do serious harm to the pig and bacon industries of the country.

The Pigs and Bacon Commission are aware of the arrangement referred to in the Deputy's question and in fixing prices for pigs as between dead-weight and live-weight they have made the live-weight price such as will compensate for any disadvantage to the producer in the purchase of pigs by live-weight.

Has the Minister heard any complaints about the way the producers are treated in regard to pigs at the moment?

The producers are coming to me and asking if anything can be done. I have said I would see the Minister and that, if anything could be done, he would do it. The position is very unsatisfactory at present in regard to pigs going into bacon factories. In the constitutency which the Minister and I represent, 90 per cent. of the pigs go in live-weight and I think the Pigs and Bacon Board should come to some agreement with the curers regarding the weighing of pigs so that that could be done at the weighbridge and the producer could go home with the money in his pocket. Otherwise, a lot of people will go out of pig production.

As I stated on the last occasion when prices were fixed, the relation of the dead-weight price to the live-weight price will induce the factory in future to take according to dead-weight rather than live-weight. Many more are purchased by dead-weight than by live-weight and I think the matter will be made right in that way.

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