Mutton, Beef May Also Need Diversification

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31754, 10 August 1968, Page 8

Mutton, Beef May Also Need Diversification

New Zealand may have to look for new markets for beef and mutton as well as lamb.

The deputy chairman of the Meat Board, Mr C. Hilgendorf, told a conference of New Zealand Nuffield fanning scholars at Palmerston North this week that New Zealand had been successful in diverting ewe mutton away from the United Kingdom so that in the last two years it had been depending on Japan to take this commodity, but this year with drought in Australia and the production of more ewe mutton there than in the previous year and a bigger proportion of It going to Japan than to the United States, the Japanese had been late in starting to buy New Zealand ewe mutton and were now buying none at all even at low prices. It would be necessary to look round the world for markets other than Japan, too.

This applied equally to beef. New Zealand had taken its beef from the United Kingdom market but now about 80 per cent went to the United States which had quotas on the Import of beef. New Zealand had not run into any trouble on this score in the last year or two but this year both Australia and

New Zealand were sending a large proportion of their beef to the United States and any further large increases in the quantities of beef from Aus. tralia, Ireland and this country could have a very serious effect on the market, he said.

There was nowhere else where New Zealand could obtain prices for its beef “within cooee” of those in the United States, so that this country might need to go out to sell beef as well, and particularly processed beef. Earlier, Mr Hilgendorf said prospects for meat looked to be fairly good from a long term point of view. Although there might be temporary surpluses, all the predictions indicated that there would be markets for meat at relatively high prices in the foreseeable future. The Food and Agriculture Organisation predicted shortages by 1975 of beef and veal and sheep and lamb meats. While it was well known that there were good market prospects for beef, the deficiency in supplies of which were expected to be 8 per cent, sheep meat and lamb were expected to be running about 13 per cent behind requirements.