FEW GAINS FOR LAMB

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31499, 13 October 1967, Page 26

FEW GAINS FOR LAMB

(Special Correspondent N.Z.PA.)

LONDON, October 12.

In spite of increasing promotion in Europe and elsewhere by the major producers, mutton and lamb are still of relatively little importance outside New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic, says the commodities division, of the Commonwealth Secretariat, in its annual review of the meat trade.

The division says that even in these four countries consumption has hardly risen in the last 10 years or so. In Australia it has been falling steadily since the late 19505.

of mutton and lamb shows relatively little responsiveness to movements in the general price level of other meats.

“While the world beef shortage in 1964 and 1965 stimulated higher production of pork and poultry-meat, world output of mutton and lamb fell in both years and prices remained very low compared with those of other meats. Australia and New Zealand limited internal absorption in order to release more for exports but the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic hardly increased demand." However, some countries In Europe, notably in Scandinavia, appear to have eaten more mutton and lamb in 1964 and 1965 than previously, the division says. The unsatisfied demand for meat in Japan was also being increasingly channelled toward mutton and lamb from New Zealand and Australia.

Attention is drawn by the division to a fall in sheep numbers in the United States. At the beginning of 1966 they were about 52 per cent of the pre-war figure. Slaughterings in 1965 were down 80,800 tons on the record of 371,400 tons set four years previously. However, in Argentina there has been considerable growth in the mutton and lamb industry. Sales of sheep

rose in 1965 by 34 per cent, compared with 1964. Pealing with Eastern Europe, the division says numbers have tended to rise in Bulgaria, East Germany and Rumania but have been falling in Poland and Jugoslavia. It believes that in the Soviet Union the number will recover to pre-1963 levels in “a year or two.” The 1966 sheep and lamb slaughtering statistics compiled by the division show that killings in Argentina rose from 9,100,000 in 1965 to 17,413,000 last year. New Zealand killings were down more than 500,000 and Australian killings down more than two million. Although the United Kingdom is rated the world’s biggest market for exported mut-

ton and lamb, consumption per head of population last year was little more than a quarter that of New Zealand and Australia. Britons ate 231 b per head of population, and New Zealanders and Australians ate 821 b.

The division says the general shortage which characterised the world meat trade in 1964 and 1965 gave way to relative abundance in 1966. Production of beef and veal rose last year in some of the major exporting and importing countries to new levels. Production of beef and veal rose 6 per cent on 1965 figures. “It is expected that the recovery in output of beef and veal will continue this year and possibly well into 1968,” the division says.

“The concentration of consumption in only a few countries may well explain why, unlike other meats with short production cycles, production