FARMERS URGED TO KEEP TO QUALITY OF EXPORT LAMB

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28414, 22 October 1957, Page 15

FARMERS URGED TO KEEP TO QUALITY OF EXPORT LAMB

(New Zealand Press Association)

GISBORNE, October 21. It is imperative that New Zealand meat producers take every possible step to ensure that the reputation for highest quality in their lamb output is maintained, says Mr A. Kingwell. a member of the Smithfield lamb judging panel.

Mr Kingwell, who is on a tour of the Dominion, is managing-du - ector of the British-New Zealand Meat Company, Ltd., of Smithfield.

i, He has been concerned with a tendency among some New Zealand producers to take it lor [granted that whatever they had to sell would sell on the London i lamb market. It was true that New Zealand had won a “world’s best” recognition from British consumers, Mr Kingwell said.

He considered that the cost ol building up that reputation should be realised, and also the tremendous blow that could be dealt it in a very short time if farmers here took too much for granted.

"I have heard a tanner in the North Island say that he would not bother to finish off his lambs

before putting them into the works because he could get as much for them unfinished,” said Mr Kingwell. “Dangerous Attitude”

“That I feel is a very dangerous attitude; dangerous tc the future of the Dominion’s prospects in the United Kindom,” he said.

People who for many years were limited in the quantity and value of the meat they weie allowed to buy could not be particularly discriminating in then purchases 1 , and during that time Britain had to use what it could import. Today the British house wife was developing a mind oi her own about what she would accept from her butcher and the meat retailer looked to Smith field for the quality to suit his customers.

In lamb, the housewife wanted a short shoulder, with meat ou it. She was paying a good price and wanted to see something for it, not waste her cash on bon° and fat. Retailers could give her satisfaction with well-finisliea New Zealand lamb, out they knew, they were taking a risk with anything that was not well finished. Change of Taste Moreover there hao never been a time when so many people in Britain had taken their middav meals on working days at restaurants, canteens and cafeteria, said Mr Kingwell. One effect of this now habit was that they were developing a taste for something off the grill for the evening meal—lamp chops for instance.

Lamb producers should certainly breed for a good amount of meat on the mid section whicn they would not get from (he straight Romney. “I don't think that any producer here should aim to seil on the London market a lamb that nas not had the chance to develop quality, he said.

“For any one of a numbei oi reasons, quality is what has established the demand there for the Dominion’s product, and it coula be ruinous to exploit that market with anything else than good quality.”

Mr Kingwell commented on the remarkable improvement shown by the Gisborne consignment in the last competition compared with earlier seasons.