High Meat Price Warning

Press, Issue 32345, 10 July 1970, Page 9

High Meat Price Warning

Cattle producers in all countries should co-oper-ate In attempts to prevent meat prices getting too high, an officer of the New Zealand Meat Board, Mr J. V. White, said in Hamilton this week, according to the Press Association. Mr White, presenting a paper on access problems for meat at the twelfth meat industry research conference, suggested this as a good preventive measure against the expansion of substitute meats.

“It seems unlikely that these will replace prime cuts, although "this cannot be ruled out, but they could make inroads into the hamburger market,” he said. “The main danger, though, is likely to be in developing or potentially developing markets.” Keeping prices down has never proved easy, particularly as the United States cattle interests would say that their main concern was with prime cuts. “I do not know how one brings home to them the possibility of a repeti-

tion of the butter-mar-garine saga and, in particular, the folly of turning a blind eye to the potentialities which lie in the chemical synthesis of vegetable protein, but the attempt should be made,” he said.