Heavy lamb under evaluation

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33964, 3 October 1975, Page 6

Heavy lamb under evaluation

The Meat Board is looking into whether New Zealand should be producing more heavier weight lambs. A hoard spokesman said this week they were aware there were areas in Britain where a heavier lean type of lamb was preferred. They were also trying to assess the demand in terms of the suitability of certain types of carcases and whether these carcases would earn a premium.

In the last season he said that the board had conducted a trial with heavy weight lambs. These had come mainly from Hawke’s Bay and the numbers had not been large, but from this small-scale trial there were indications that heavy weight lambs, lean but adequately finished, would be very acceptable for certain sections of the lamb trade.

There were areas, particularly in the north of the country and in the industrial areas where a heavy lean lamb was preferred, and there was also a demand for this lamb for institutional feeding and in the hotel and restaurant trade, which liked a heavier lamb with a well developed eye of meat over the loin for chops.

The former 8s and 4s grades, he said, tended to have too much fat to be entirely acceptable as heavy' carcases. However, the board spokesman said it had to be realised if was not possible to generalise. Most of the demand, as reflected in the exporters’ schedule, which in turn reflected consumer demand, was for the lightweight lambs between 281 b and 361 b. To his knowledge there had as yet been no conscious request for an increased supply of heavy, lean lambs.

Nevertheless he said that there was the prospect of an increasing demand for the heavier type of lamb. The Meat Export Development Company liked to get a heavier lamb for the American market and in Europe also there was an interest in this type of lamb. Rather than across the board production of heavier lambs, the spokesman said he saw production of these lambs being a specialist type of production, subject of arrangement between exporter or marketer and producer, and probably most suited to particular areas of the country like Southland or irrigated country where pasture growth was more favourable.