Recognition For Research In Two Industries

Press, Volume C, Issue 29459, 10 March 1961, Page 24

Recognition For Research In Two Industries

In the mounting struggle to maintain and expand markets for our primary products every tool must be used. Science is one of the most important aids in this process and this week in two important branches of the primary industry this has been given recognition.

Last Saturday the Gover-nor-General Viscount Cobham, opened the new laboratories of the Meat Industry Research Institute at Hamilton. By New Zealand standards these laboratories costing some £150,000 are relatively palatial, and they have been described as without equal in the country today, but compared with the annual value of our export meat—about £73m —the expenditure on this building represents only about l/486th part and of course it is being shared by the Government, the Meat Board and the freezing industry. F our-Pronged Scientists in the new laboratory will be making a four-pronged attack on the problems of the industry through departments of mitrobiology concerned mainly with the microbial spoilage of meat and meat products, a biochemistry section looking into the chemical and physical nature of meat, an engineering section concerned with the application of physical and chemical principles to meat processing, freezing, storage and distribution and a technical development section. It is not hard to see ways that this laboratory may handsomely repay its sponsors and the country, though the course may not be easy or rapid. For instance the institute is looking into the way that carcases dry out or shrink in cooling and freezing. This may amount to only a per cent .or two of total weight, but when the annual return from meat amounts to £7om or £Bom it is not hard to see that that if it was possible to eliminate this wastage by some change in the handling of the carcase the gain would be of the order of a million or two pounds. Nor it is difficult to foresee that out of studies of the nature of meat and muscles there could come some improvement in the tenderness and palatability of meat with a consequent enhancing of its appeal to the consumer. Packaging For the benefit of visitors to the laboratory last Saturday there was a display of packaged lamb cuts some in polythene wrappers and others in an air-tight seal pack, and there were of course samples of pre-pack-aged beef. This is obviously an aspect of meat research closely associated with meeting the preference of customers.

The institute will devote some 30 per cent, of its research effort to fundamental

studies. This will not be wasted time. Sir George Thomson, in his presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science last year, said that the best way to make advances in technology was to understand the principles. There could be no more telling advocacy of the need for fundamental research in support of applied investigations.

Dr. W. M. Hamilton, secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, has welcomed the new laboratories secure in the belief that they will return their investment many times. He has, for instance, quoted the example of the Crop Research Division, quite near home at Lincoln, which by breeding Aotea

and Arawa had increased the worth of the country’s wheat crop by about £lm a year, or more than the total expenditure of the division in the whole of its 25 years. Wool Research This week the executive of the Wool Research Organisation has taken another step in the direction of establishing its own research centre by naming Canterbury Agricultural College as the site and announcing the names of three men who will go overseas to study in preparation for taking positions on the staff of the organisation.

Canterbury people will be pleased that this province has been chosen as the site of this laboratory. It is pleasing that the selection has been made on its merits without the array of force and parochialism that has unhappily so often been evident when a decision of a like nature has had to be made in the agricultural field

—to wit diagnostic stations and the veterinary college. Of the need for more concentrated research on wool and the animals that produce it there can be no doubt. Australia has shown us the way here and in the sense that her work has been in the finer qualities means that in New Zealand the emphasis must be rather on the coarser qualities of which we ape one of the world's greatest suppliers. This may, to some extent, nullify some of the advantages of placing the organisation in Canterbury, but nevertheless the close association of the institution with Lincoln College, the divisions of the D.S.I.R. and the University of Canterbury, of which Lincoln will soon be a constituent college, will ensure that the staff of the organisation will have close associations with allied scientists as well as having ready access to a vital sheep raising area. Again it is a case of the industry and the Government combining in individual and national interests. It will be the hope of everyone that there will be a rich dividend from the two organisations.