Quotas worry Meat Board

Press, 27 February 1980, Page 14

Quotas worry Meat Board

The United States Congress has made moves recently to restrict imports of New Zealand lamb and beef.

The chairman of the Meat Board, Mr C. Hilgendorf, has just returned from a meeting of the Lamb Promotion Co-ordi-nating Committee in Kirville, Texas, which discussed ways to counter the moves.

He said American cattlemen had succeeded in getting changes in the quotas on beef imports and a few bills had been produced in Congress which would, also seek to impose some sort of quotas on imports of lamb.

The committee consists of representatives of American sheep producers, the Australian Meat and Livestock Commission and the New Zealand Meat Board.

“We cannot say that the bills will not continue to be brought forward,” said Mr Hilgendorf, “but my guess is that they will be less exuberantly supported by the sheep

farming organisations than before the meeting.” Mr Hilgendorf said that the committee had been set up about 10 years ago, partly as a means of communicating among the sheep producers of the three countries. It also had a budget amounting to about $lOO,OOO which was subscribed to equally by the three countries to promote lamb in the United States, whether it was fresh or frozen.

Over the years the joint organisation had worked fairly well, he said. The philosophy behind it was that the American market was an enormous one. The average yearly amount of lamb eaten had fallen from 3.2 kg per person to o.7kg, so anything that could be done to encourage more Americans to eat more, lamb would be good for sheep producers in the three countries.

Initially it was not very easy to persuade the American sheep producers that this was true — their feeling was that the less there was the higher their prices would be.

For the first time in 30 years, Mr Hilgendorf said, sheep numbers in the United States had recently increased marginally. This was a reflection of better prices for lambs, and wholesale lamb prices in the United States still remained higher than for beef in spite of the improvement in the beef market there. He said New Zealanders and Americans believed that there was a wide market in the United States ' for lamb, which New Zealand would help to supply provided the price remained high enough, but there would not have to be much of a drop without it falling below prices in other markets. New Zealand could expand gradually its exports to the United States, but

to put in a vast amount' suddenly would upset the market and make it less possible to supply other good markets that were developing around the world.