THE MEAT SLUMP.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 264, 7 November 1932, Page 4

THE MEAT SLUMP.

POSITION IN BRITAIN. Sheep breeders throughout Great Britain are rising in anger and bitterness against the "bankruptcy" prices they are obtaining for their stock. ','-''. Prices realised at the sales and fairs in August and September slunrped far below the level of 1914. For instance (reports the Daily Express" of September 14), theaves (sheep which-have not bred a lamb) are fetching an average of £2 1/ this year, against £3 5/4 in the year the Great War broke out. Ewes which sold at £2 12/8 in 1914 are now being sold at £1 10/, and lambs have dropped from the pre-war price of £1 18/3 to approximately £1. . "The cause of these ruinous prices is the rock-bottom market prices of frozen mutton coming in from foreign countries, said a prominent Lincolnshire authority on sheep breeding to a "Daily Express" representative. "Nothing is being clone to stop the glut of cheap mutton from abroad, and it is being dumped here at prices which" are hitting our breeders right below the belt. "There is no breeder in Lincolnshire who, if he were sold up to-morrow, would realise twenty shillings in. the pound. "One of our biggest breeders sold pedigree lambs last Wednesday for less than £1 apiece. Only a few years ago he sold a ram from that same flock for £1600." A graphic illustration of the rapid and ruinous decline in sheep stock prices during the last three years is shown by the following list, which is based on comparative prices of one of the most important sheep fairs in Lincolnshire: —

1930. 1931. 1932. ' £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. Lincoln rams .. 10 5 8 6 8 3 310 0 Lincoln theaves 4 5 6 2 18 6 f 10 Xbred theaves . 4 16 2 18 6 ll£o Lincoln ewes . . 3 1 1 16 7 0 0 Crossbred ewes . 3 flO 222 1134 Lincoln lambs .' 2 11 8 104 1 0 3 Crossbred lambs 2 15 1.116 2 1 08