On This Day, 17 January 1918

Birmingham Daily Post

Thursday 17 January 1918

QUESTION OF MEAT RATIONING

BIRMINGHAM COMMITTEE’S EXPERIMENT

BUTCHERS TO SERVE REGULAR CUSTOMERS ONLY

The Birmingham Food Control Committee are issuing bills to the whole of the retail butchers in the city, to be displayed in their shops, explaining to the customers that the butchers are not able to obtain more than one-half of their usual supplies, and, consequently, that they are only able serve their regular customers, and these with not more than one-half of the quantity they were in the habit of purchasing. The bills are accompanied by circulars to the butchers expressing the desire that if at any time the retailers have more meat than they require to serve to their regular customers they will arrange to transfer the surplus to neighbouring butchers who may be short, and thus avoid any necessity for formal requisitioning. The committee are anxious not to commence rationing the citizens in regard to meat unless it is absolutely necessary, and, therefore, they are trying the experiment of leaving it to the butchers to ration their customers, relying upon them to exercise the greatest care in seeing that only their regular customers are supplied. This being done with the object of preventing people going from shop to shop to obtain meat.

Under the scheme for the control of live cattle and the distribution of meat supplies, recently published, the Birmingham butchers have formed themselves into a committee, and have appointed agents to purchase cattle and sheep in the various Midland markets, and distribute the animals pro rata among the butchers on the basis of 50% of their October sales. This will ensure every butcher obtaining a certain quantity of meat for his regular customers, and preventing some shops being well stocked while others are comparatively empty. It is felt that until this is done it will be practically impossible to bind people to one retailer, because they might be tied to a particular shop where there would be insufficient meat to meet the requirements of the regular customers. To enable the scheme to operate successfully, it will be necessary for every butcher, as indicated in an advertisement in the “Daily Post” yesterday, to apply for a form of application for buying certificates, and to see that the form is correctly filled up, so that his proportion of meat available may be calculated. The forms are to be obtained at the local Food Office in Margaret Street, and they must filled up and returned as promptly as possible.