§ Captain Yorkasked the Minister of Agriculture whether he is aware that the Small Pigkeepers' Council is insisting that a village produce council, including in its activities a pig club, is not entitled to affiliate with the council as such; whether separate accountancy and management of the pig club section of a village produce association is required for such affiliation; and will he get this altered as, owing to the difficulty of providing the personnel for such separate accountancy and management in country villages in wartime, the promotion of pig clubs is being seriously delayed?
Mr. HudsonThe arrangements for the supply of rationed feeding stuffs to pig clubs, and for the retention for domestic consumption of some of the pigs fattened, make it essential, in order to ensure efficent administration and to avoid the risk of abuse, that the personnel of pig clubs registered with the Small Pig Keepers' Council should consist solely of pig keepers. There is, however, no reason why officials of a village produce association should not also act in a separate capacity as officials of the pig club, and there is no evidence that the requirement mentioned is delaying over the country as a whole the formation of new pig clubs.