Bleak outlook seen for meat exports

Press, 2 December 1981, Page 11

Bleak outlook seen for meat exports

PA ./ ' Auckland New Zealand could be running into grave selling difficulties with this season’s export beef and mutton, according.to an Auckland exporter, Mr W. F. Leonard. He said that the problem would be separate from the seriops problems posed by the non-payment of $63 million for lamb sold.to Iran. The Meat Board could end up owning most of the season’s mutton production and the mutton.could clutter stores. throughout New Zealand.

The New Zealand beef market in the United States could be further depressed by the ; swing away from rolls, buns,, and French fries: the starch foods that traditionally went with hamburgers and hotdogs. Mr Leonard, who is the managing director of the Auckland-based co-operative, Producers’ Meats, Ltd, and

who is a former chairman of the Meat Exporters’ Council, is just back from the United States and Britain. He said that because of the present illogical system of calculating the competitive domestic price schedules for export mutton in relation to the minimum prices set under the Meat Board’s price-smoothing scheme, the board was most likely to become the owner of most of the season’s export production.

He said, “This could involve the board in a loss of more than $2O million and could create problems of where to store the mutton if major sales do not eventuate early in 1982. Such sales are unlikely.

“New Zealand freezing companies will not be happy to hold considerable tonnages of mutton in their cold stores because that would restrict their ability to continue to

kill lambs from January to May.’’ Mr Leonard said that at best the United States, beef market looked stodgy and inactive.

He predicted dire results from a continuation of an over-supply of cheap pork and poultry coupled with a more pronounced swing away from eating “unhealthy foods.”

He defined unhealthy food not as the New Zealand manufacturing-grade beef which is converted into hamburgers and hotdogs but as the rolls, buns, and french fries which, he said were the traditional additions. Unless American manufacturers of beef products could induce the fast-food chains to market hamburgers and hotdogs with salads and vegetables rather than with a diet of straight starch, beef could be in for an even worse time.