Lamb Shortage For Export

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32077, 27 August 1969, Page 26

Lamb Shortage For Export

(From Our Own Reporter)

WELLINGTON, August 26.

New Zealand was now short of lambs for export, the deputy chairman of the Meat Board, Mr C. Hilgendorf, of Sherwood, Mid-Canterbury, told the annual meeting of the electoral committee of the Meat Board today.

Mr Hilgendorf said that all countries to which New Zealand was selling lamb would like larger quantities. The demand was particularly for early lamb.

The board was disappointed that over the last two years the expansion in sheep numbers was very small. In the year before last sheep numbers had been static although ewe numbers had risen substantially; but in the last year it seemed that ewe numbers were also static. The board felt that this was not a good position. At the same time cattle numbers had increased substantially, said Mr Hilgendorf. It would he quite wrong to think that the board did not also want an ircrease. in sheep numbers. There had been much propaganda about’

: increasing beef supplies and : about how easy it was to sell I beef.

There was a need for more ' beef but not at the expense of ‘sheep numbers. "I may be too impressed with lamb but 1 believe that our lamb is an article of quite: unusual qualitv; it is stand-; ardised and it is better than! any other lamb in the world j and we have a very large pro-| portion of the lamb in inter-: national trade," said Mr Hilgendorf. Ewe Mutton Mr G. A. Shanks (Gisborne) asked whether it was going to be possible to sell the additional ewe" mutton that would result from additional sheep numbers. Sir John Ormond said that Japan was short of protein

—and that was why lamb was starting to go into that market. Greece was also short of this product.