Meat industry ‘critical’

Press, 21 May 1982, Page 8

Meat industry ‘critical’

If current levels of cost increase continue, by 1990 killing and processing charges per lamb would be $52 and per cattle beast $6lO, according to Mr J. L. Daniell, a member of the Meat Board.

“Impossible? All too likely, I am afraid, unless we create widespread public awareness and a consequent determination to act to prevent this happening,” he told the annual Lincoln College Farmers’ Conference this week.

He said most of our major markets have available a wide range of competing meats, both domestic and imports.

“Our product may be attractively presented, of consistently good quality and available every week of the year but if it is not competitively priced, signalling ‘good value for money’ to the

housewife we won’t make a sale.

“Customers simply won’t pay us the kind of price we need to cover our excessively high costs, when their own inflation rate is only one third to one half of ours,” he said.

“Although we face the toughest possible international competition, I am quite clear that we have the ability and the resources to overcome the problems, but we must mobilise now and act this year.

“The future is not predetermined but is a consequence of human action at all levels of industry, Government and society generally.”

He said that while there had been a steady lift in productivity per farm, if the present knowledge was applied by a greater number of

farmers a considerable further production increase would occur.

A recent analysis of North Island hill country survey farms by the Economic Service of the Meat and Wool Boards showed that the best farmers not only lifted their output very substantially over the past 10 years, but also increased their net income by more than twice the rate of inflation.

Apart from the Meat Board’s ongoing involvement in export meat grading, arrangement of shipping and freight rate negotiations, product promotion in key markets, it also financed half the cost of the economic service and contributed almost $1 million to the Meat Industry Research Institute. Other projects in progress included a major report by San Francisco-based consultants on our shipping needs and services for the next 10 years; a thorough survey of the organisation and cost of internal transport of meat; an “in-house” review of export meat grades and a study of by-products and

their processing, packaging and marketing to define more clearly what credits for them should be set against killing and processing charges. Mr Daniell said the alternatives to concerted action by all sectors on the problems of the meat industry were clear. “South American meat industries were devastated by the same kind of forces we are now facing; unused packing plants, jobless meatworkers, declining livestock numbers, reduced stock performance, inadequate topdressing and poor pasture growth. “The list is depressing and the symptoms becoming too familiar.

“It must not happen here. “We have the people and the resources. “The situation is critical, so let us accept the challenge, tackle the problems, keep all New Zealanders posted on progress and win through to a soundly based expanding and profitable future for our industry’s second century,” said Mr Daniell.