BRITISH MEAT IMPORTS

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26395, 13 April 1951, Page 3

BRITISH MEAT IMPORTS

N.Z. MAY CONTINUE AS LARGEST SUPPLIER

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) LONDON, April 12. Discussing the sources on which Britain is likely to depend this year for her meat imports, a special correspondent of the “Financial Times” suggests that New Zealand will probably continue to be the largest foreign supplier. The New Zealand farmer, he adds, would certainly attempt to keen as many lambs as he could for shearing, but the extent to which he couid do this was limited by New Zealand’s grass economy. As flocks expanued. killings as well as wool production should increase.

“Australia is a different case. The Minister of Food (Mr Maurice Webb) recently prophesied that Australian supplies would decrease for the next two or three years. High wool prices drive more sheepbreeders to Merinos. The absence of drought means the country can carry more flocks for clipping, and of what there is the local buyer will take first choice. Australians and Argentinians eat 80 per cent, of their own output, and New Zealanders only 20 per cent, of theirs.” The correspondent says Britain ate well during the last calendar year by the meagre standards at present imposed on her. but by comparison wun the average of the years 1934 to 1938 the country consumed only 88 per cent, of its pre-war weight of fresh and frozen meat, and 83 per cent, of its consumption of bacon and ham.