'$100m’ cost for meat industry

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33032, 27 September 1972, Page 9

'$100m’ cost for meat industry

To meet the standards of the European Economic Community may cost the New Zealand meat industry about sloom, according to Mr J. D. McNab, director of the Meat Division of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.

Mr McNab says that New Zealand’s meat industry has the potential to treble its returns if the farmers and the freezing industry produce more of what overseas customers want.

“The facts of life are these,” he says. “In a world becoming increasingly conscious of pollution in every form — including everything related to food—it is no good looking to past standards, or even the relatively comfortable situation of today.”

Individual carcases can no longer be assessed as simply a “hunk of meat,” he says. Rather, todays consumers want to know about the animal from which the meat came, its disease status, and the conditions under which it was reared and managed. “The United States emphasis is on sanitation, whereas the E.E.C. emphasis is on disease in stock and animal populations which may be detrimental to the consumer.

“Both are talking about the same thing. The known E.E.C. requirements will be a much greater cos{ to the industry and a guess of sloom does not seem out of the way.” HIGH REJECTION Mr McNab says, however, that New Zealand’s meat industry is aware of the task facing it and has developed a “planned approach” towards meeting E.E.C. requirements. One of the industry’s biggest problems is that of fluctuating standards of dressing in the works. “Our rejections in the United States tend to confirm this,” he says. “New Zealand has had the highest rejection rate for beef of any country exporting to the United States lately. He sees the 1972-73 season as being a difficult one be-

cause of the further tightening of hygiene standards. These will include kidney inspection, improved sanitary dressing methods, improved plant sanitation, effective fly, bird, and vermin control, and increased emphasis on residue controls.