Cattle ploughed under in thousands

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34151, 12 May 1976, Page 23

Cattle ploughed under in thousands

f.V Z PA -Reu’e’-—Copyrtont> SYDNEY. May 11. Many Australian beef farmers. facing' bankruptcy and ruin, are shooting! their cattle at a time when housewives are being warned to expect higher prices for meat in the coming months. The cattlemen have been reduced to despair by drought. shrinking world markets, and a combination of other factors. Many of them can be seen these days ploughing under their stock while in the shops housewives are faced with rising meat prices. The producer and the consumer are caught up in an unfortunate paradox. The crisis is worse in the state of Victoria, where a drought ha« 'endered much beef unsaleable. A srazier'* spokesman has estimated that more than 20.000 head of cattle have

been destroyed in Victoria and southern New South Wales since the beginning of the year, mainly because of the drought. Some farmers, knowing their animals wil only fetch around 50c to 5A1.50 per kilogram at the sales yards, choose instead to have them shot under the supervision of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals rather than outlay the cost of transport to the abattoirs. In the Victorian ’.own of Tongala recently, about 1000 cattle were killed in a slaughter organised by the local council and the United Dairy Farmers of Australia. A spokesman said it was cheaper for the farmers to pay 30c a head to have the animals shot than to pay the cost of their transport to a yarding at markets, then sell them for low prices The middlemen — the [processors and the butchers I — who account for some 75 iper cent of the final meat bill, are coming tn for their share of blame.

The Victorian Graziers’ Association’s secretary (Mr J. B. Barclay) said an enormous increase in labour costs on the processing side was pricing Australia out of overseas markets and had caused a fall in returns to the farmer. Between 1974 and 1975. processing costs for beef had risen about 81 per cent, he said. The executive director of the Victorian Farmers’ Union (Mr C. H. Forster) claimed that the middleman added enormously to the costs. “Wages have soared in recent years, and there’s evidence that abattoir workers are producing less and less for more pay’ than in other parts of the world.” he said. These higher precessing costs had lost Australia markets to other countries, such as New Zealand and Argentina. Mr Forster also said rhe Australian Government had failed to lobby hard enough on behalf of the cattlemen to 'capture overseas markets.