Extended Meat Killing Season Suggested

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32035, 9 July 1969, Page 1

Extended Meat Killing Season Suggested

New Zealand was too small a country to afford the investment of sBom-sloom in an industry which ran for half the year, the secretary of the New Zealand Freezing Workers’ Association (Mr F. E. McNulty) said yesterday in calling for an investigation into extending the killing season.

Mr D. Morten, representing the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company, commented that he personally would welcome and support anything which would extend the season.

Professor B. P. Philpott, director of the Lincoln College agricultural economics research unit, described Mr McNulty’s proposal as a penetrating hypothesis and said that it merited investigation.

Mr McNulty said that the costs of killing were inflated because the works had to load 12 months’ overhead on to six months’ work, and the lack of year-round work and the increasing difficulty of finding alternative employment in the off-season meant that skilled seasonal labour would soon be hard to find. This year, for the first time, meat companies in Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne were recruiting men from New Zealand, Mr McNulty said. This was because Australian slaughtermen were deserting the works for permanent jobs in industry, and those men were leaving although the Australian killing season was longer than New Zealand’s. About 100 New Zealand slaughtermen were already working in Australia and more would leave soon under an arrangement between his union and a Melbourne company, said Mr McNulty. Some of them might be expected to remain in Australia and be lost permanently to the New Zealand freezing industry.

“More Work” “It’s no use calling for increased stock production and expecting to pick up skilled slaughtermen from the street when you want them,” he said. The only way the men could be retained was by providing them with more work and the obvious way of doing this was by extending the season.

Australia’s longer season was due in part to a better climate for lamb production but also to the killing of mutton outside the lamb season, Mr McNulty said. The Australians were sending more mutton to Japan than we were partly by letting some of their lambs mature and killing them in the off-season. New Zealand was trying to increase production and to compress the increase into the same killing season. There was already too much concern with lamb, because there were only a few world markets for it and the main one, the United Kingdom, would suffer heavily when Britain entered the European Economic Community. “We should diversify toward mutton,” Mr McNulty said. “The farmers should be encouraged to hold back stock for killing in the offseason. They would need incentives, but there should be a lower killing rate and- it would work out far cheaper, as far as the country is con-

cerned, than closing the works for half the year.” Without some positive action, said Mr McNulty, the labour position in the New Zealand works would follow the Australian pattern, where slaughtermen had left "wholesale.” An investigation into the industry, by a committee, comprising representatives of the Government, stock producers, meat exporters and trade unions would be a practical start to bringing the meat industry out of the last century and into the realities of today.

Aim Applauded Mr Morten said that he could only applaud Mr McNulty’s aim. He felt, however, that the National Development Council would probably be the best authority to investigate the proposal. Professor Philpott said that one of the difficulties about extending the season “is that God doesn’t make the grass grow for more than a few months a year. “Lamb killing depends on lamb production, which depends on the feed, and there’s not much growth after Christmas. Supplementary feeds would have to be used in autumn: I would like to see an evaluation of the added costs. “I would also like to know,” he said, “whether the demand in Asia, specifically Japan, is. for lamb or mutton —this would be well worth research. All New Zealand has done so far is sell a lot of old mutton for processing, very little mutton and hardly any lamb for consumption as such.”

A special company should be established, as had been done in the United States, for the development of exports to Japan. “I have long held the view we should do market research in Japan,” Professor Philpott said. Market experiments were needed, including trial shipments.

Meat Board Role “This ought to be done. Th e Meat Board ought to be doing it On the face of it, Mr McNulty has got a point there. Meat producers don’t necessarily take the long view of things. Things are booming in the United Kingdom so they leave it at that. “Mind you,” said Professor Philpott, “one factor keeping up the eost of killing is the refusal of the workers to kill to capacity in any one day.” There were strong arguments for a major investigation into the costs of meat slaughtering. Three matters which should be considered were:—

1. The present compression of the lamb killing season, and the possibility of extending the season with mutton killing.

2. The possibility of exporting more mutton. 3. The freezing union’s daily quota restriction on killing.

It had to be recognised, said Professor Philpott, that any extension of the season without incentive payments would leave the farmer worse off than at present.

“Three Ways”

Dr I. E. Coop, professor of animal science at Lincoln College, said that there were three main ways in which the killing season could be extended. The first was to lamb earlier. Canterbury lambing was already fairly early to reduce the effect of summer drought, but it would be possible for a large proportion of farmers with Corriedale and half-bred ewes to lamb earlier than at present by perhaps one month. There was also a technique for advancing the breeding season in Romneys by about two weeks. However, said Professor Coop, very early lambing required more winter and early spring feed and it depressed the lambing percentage slightly. so a substantial premium would have to be paid to get farmers to move in this direction.

The second method would be for a proportion of farmers to lamb later, and indeed there were some advantages in this in the wetter areas. But this should not be carried too far, say by more than one month, or the lambing percentage was likely to fall. Accordingly, said Professor Coop, the possibility of spreading the lambing season was limited to about one month in each direction. “I think, however, that most fanners would prefer to lamb as they do now, and if it is desired to extend the kill into the autumn and winter periods, they would prefer to do this by taking the lambs to a heavier weight. At present the return for this is relatively slight.”

The third method was the wintering of lambs to produce hoggets for slaughter in the early spring, and this would be costly in terms of winter feed, said Professor Coop. If the export schedule price for hogget was the same as for lamb it was likely that it would be profitable to do this, and it would increase efficiency by producing more meat a ewe mating. But unless the hogget price was the same, and at present it was not, it would be more economical, from the individual farmer’s viewpoint, to continue to farm as at present and to take up any surplus feed with more ewes or with beef.

“If it is believed to be in the national interest to spread the kill,” said Professor Coop, “then a proper economic analysis should be made, setting out where the benefits are to be obtained and what they are worth.

“Then the meat processor must indicate what sort of schedule he is going to offer to producers to achieve these benefits, and it will have to stand some chance of being accepted as a worth-while inducement”

Quota Cited I The chairman of the North . Canterbury meat and wool , section of Federated Farmers t (Mr A. F. Wright) said yes- . terday that he could appreciate the benefit to the freezI ing worker of a longer kill- . ing season. I It was fair to comment, i however, that by enforcing a quota on Canterbury works I the freezing union was itself . keeping killing charges higher . than was thought necessary. While the position was ■ much less critical in other

parts of New Zealand, the extremes of Canterbury's climate did not, in his view, allow much scope for altering the present periods of production and killing. Killable stock held over the dry period in the summer would reduce the carrying capacity of many farms in the following season, and for this reason it was essential that ewes should be killed the moment the lambs were weaned.