Faults Seen In Meat Export Methods

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31753, 9 August 1968, Page 12

Faults Seen In Meat Export Methods

New Zealand’s meat export business was criticised by a food technologist yesterday as being a disposal industry and not a consumer industry.

Instead of going to the market and finding out what the consumer wanted and in what form, the meat industry was simply disposing of meat, said Dr Mary Earle, of Massey University’s department of food technology.

“For 40 years,” she told the Industrial Design Council’s food packaging seminar, “we have been buying cattle from the farmer and just throwing it on the market.”

Only now was the meat industry starting to look at the market first and then fight to win sales against other suppliers.

Dr Earle said food must reach the consumer in "tiptop” condition and in a functionally effective form. “What customer likes to get a nasty red rust stain on meat?” she asked. Lamb was exported in stockinet bags and stowed away in the hold

of a ship for six weeks. If even a slow drip was falling on it in the ship for that length of time, it reached Britain stained with rust.

“We have got to protect our products,” she said. “It is not good enough to say that it was fine when it left the factory. It’s our product, and our responsibility to make sure that it’s fine when it reaches the customer.” Dr Earle asked her audience to imagine the consternation of a British housewife when faced with a whole side of lamb. A New Zealand housewife would know what to do with it, but a British housewife would not.

“How pleased they would be,” she said, “if they got a nice leg of New Zealand lamb instead, wrapped in a poly-

thene bag. They would know that no-one’s hand had been on it and that it hadn’t been thrown around on the dock or at Smithfield market or at their own butcher’s shop. If the bag had cooking instructions printed on it, an attractive picture, words to show that it came from New Zealand, and finally if it tasted good, the housewife would keep buying it.” Dr Earle said she thought New Zealand had now stopped selling beef in hessian bags, but what was also wanted was an attractively presented export product that an overseas restaurateur would not be ashamed for his customers to see being brought into the restaurant.

“Something,” she said, “which he would be pleased to take into his restaurant — not something which he would have to slide in the back door.”

Dr ESrle urged New Zealand to stop trying to do all its own research into such things as food preservation, storage and packaging. In such a small country there was only a handful of scientists; New Zealand should get the results of overseas research and apply it as quickly as possible. “That’s how we got ahead in agriculture,” she said, “by getting the results of research in England and applying it before anyone else—to very good effect.” Dr Earle said a great deal more information needed to be collected for the food export industry as a whole. It was essential that packages be attractive, protective, convenient and informative about the use of the products.