Rugby, Meat Interests

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31730, 13 July 1968, Page 8

Rugby, Meat Interests

In civilian life the assistant manager of the French Rugby football team, Mr H. Foures, is an executive of a French firm that both imports and exports meat. Speaking through an interpreter this week, he said that his firm had given him leave to come with the team partly to allow him to look into the meat position in New Zealand. Mr Foures was cautious about any business in the export of New Zealand meat coming from his investigations, which he described as exploratory. He said he recognised that tariff and quota barriers made it difficult for New Zealand to export meat to France, which was in any case also a big producer of meat in her own right, but there could be prospects for mutton and for certain cuts of lamb such as loins

and legs of which there was a shortage, but the export of whole carcases was rather remote.

Mr Foures said he felt that there were also opportunities for expansion of the export of offals to his countiy, in which there is already a fairly substantial trade.

The prospects for beef exports to France were also rather remote he said, but Mr Foures’s firm has connections with other countries in Europe and also with Eastern Europe and there could be some opportunity for direction of supplies to some of these areas.

Told that New Zealand was starting to experiment with the French Charolais breed of cattle he commented that he believed that it was the best breed of beef cattle in the world because “in the minimum of time you get the maximum weight of carcase.”