FROZEN PRODUCE.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18918, 5 February 1927, Page 16

FROZEN PRODUCE.

WORLD'S MEAT MARKET FACTORS. ERA OF REFRIGERATION. (FROM OfR SPECIAL CORRESPOXDE.NT.) LONDON", December 36. Conditions in the frozen meat market are as favourable as would be expected at tliis time of the year, when Christmas markets contribute to a general confusion in demand, and when all manner of produce, much of it from prize stock shows, competes heavily to the temporary depression of values. For one thing, turkeys, the traditional English Yuletide fare, are to be cheaper this year. The rather heavier run of Australian lamb arrivals this year has resulted in New Zealand prices for the time heing descending to a lower level. Last month's landings of Australian lamb totalled 400,000 carcases, to which had lo be added 180,000 carcases from the Jtiver Plate. From those two sources together 200,000 carcases of frozen mutton were also to hand. In the circumstances, the pricing of Canterbury lamb in Smithfield this week at a fraction over lOd per lb is a not unfavourable symptom, and it is satisfactory that New Zealand supplies arc rapidly waning. Trade in Europe is reported still weaker, and Belgian and German stocks in store are being forcibly reduced by holders on the news that production costs in the Argentine are becoming iower. In the presenco of Argentine ox beef in those countries selling at less than 3jd per lb c.i.f., Australian and New Zealand beef has become almost unsaleable for the time being.

Refrigeration in Great Britain. With the turn in the year, there is ushered into force in Great Britain a code of health regulations instituted by the Ministry of Health in regard to the treatment of foods for sale, which materially alters the whole aspect of food marketing in relation to a number of tho principal staple food commodities. The full force of the anti-pre-servatives order as regards colonial butter marketing is postponed six months out of consideration to tho exigencies of that trade, but tho business in preserved meats, cream, and a whole array of miscellaneous articles will have to undergo something of a revolution as from New Year's Day, so far as tho elimination of boron and other chemical preservatives is concerned. The Government leaves tho enforcement of tho new regulations to the local sanitary inspection authorities to carry out, and has given it to bo understood that such enforcement will bo actual and scvorc. In other words, tho Ministry of Health has determined to frco tho food supplies of the country from chemical adulterants. Already there have been numerous trade protests against tho early application of this regime, but with a few exceptions tho Government has turned a deaf ear to such protests. In the Houso of Commons last week tho Minister of Health reluctantly decided' that as canned meat stocks had been slow of sale in retailors' hands of late owing to the coal strike, he would allow a brief rcspito as regards tho prohibition of remaining sales of stocks containing preservatives, this indicating tho determined attitude of tho Government. Spread of Cold Storage. Tho result of tho rather sudden advent of an anti-chemical era in food marketing in the British Isles is that everywhere tho detailed application of refrigeration in small units among tho thousands of retailors up aild down tho country is being rather foverishly proceeded with, and this movement is being further pressed into domestic circles by tho considerably swollen forces of refrigerator purveyors. This band of cold storago apparatus suppliers is as varied in its constitution as it is enterprising. It i'b only natural that America, whero refrigeration is a much moro universally utilised force, should have contributed a number of leading contestants in this new campaign. America, however, is by no means tho only foreign entrant in this keen contest. Sweden, through an important and heavily capitalised oloctrical engineering concern, is proving n thorough and successful marketer of a mechanical refrigerating applianco for domestic uso which supplies a cool food cabinet by means of a contrivance which possesses no moving parts and only usos a convenient form of heat and a small water supply. Tho United States firms are mostly responsible for small but admittedly * ftlcicnt types of electrically propelled refrigerating compressors of diminutivo proportions, operating with one or other of tho well-known refrigerant gases, auch as ammonia, sulphurdioxide, and ethyl-chloride. The chief 'requirement in nil these appliances is automatic operation, and this seems to i have been successfully attained by thermostatic control in the majority of appliances marketed. Fool-proofness and reliability aro tho remaining qualities which will serve to perpetuate each individual destgn now striving for custom, and time alone can decide which of tho types at present offered will finally survive. The certainty is thnt a vast amount of capital is at present being expended in the marketing of a greater number of devices than can reasonably bo expected to become permanent features, and it remains to be seen what the result of this industrial contest will be in tho courso of a year or so. The refrigeration era now entered upon will also provo an opportunity for a great extension in the popular salo of ice for retailers' use and domestic consumption in Great Britain and the climato of the country, although moro moderate in temperature than that of the United States, where the ice habit is well established, undoubtedly provides for a great expansion in this popular utilisation of ice. New Produce from Overseas. The variety of products reaching the shores of Great Britain under refrigeration from tho Southern Hemisphere is constantly extending. New sort 3 of fruits arc continually finding a place in the retail shops of London and the provinces, with the consequence that the British publis is, month by month, becoming more educated to the powers of refrigeration and the illimitable sources of the Empire. The latest novelties from South Africa in the way of refrigerated produce are consignments of strawberries and scarlet runner beans which have arrived by motorKncr Carnarvon Castle this week. The strawberries were carried at the ship's ordinaly refrigerated fruit temperature of 38 -I'' degrees Fahrenheit, and all ar- \ rived'in first-class condition. They were packed in wooden boxes, each of which contained four cartons of about two dozen strawberries individually wrapped in waxed paper. Tho value of the consignment was represented in the f,ct that on Covent Garden Market the fruit sold at a sovereign per carton of wentv-four berries, a price evidently below" what Mayfair is content to pay £7hi luxury V"or to Christmas. Therunner beans also carried well » the cold storage chamber and they were acompankd l,y a considerable parcel of p«s in the pod, also turn.ng out well.