Bid to ease pork glut

Press, 27 October 1982, Page 22

Bid to ease pork glut

PA Wellington The Pork Marketing Board has blamed meat processors for a glut of pigmeat. The board has said it will be forced to spend an extra $lOO,OOO in pork promotion in a bid to avoid a fall in the price to farmers. It has accused the meat processors of continuing to import substantial quantities of subsidised Canadian pigmeat in spite of repeated warnings 9! an impending oversupply. “We predicted there would be a slight oversupply of pigmeat in the last quarter of this year and the first quarter of next year,” said

the chairman of the board, Mr Denis Lepper. “But the trade has seen fit to import as much meat as during last year and is now saying we might have an oversupply.” Domestic production has been increasing as a result of a trend to heavyweight pigs. The number of pigs slaughtered is about the same as last year, but heavier carcase weights have meant an over-all rise in production. The extra $lOO,OOO to be spent on promotion of bacon and fresh meat would bring total promotion spending for the year to about $650,000, Mr Lepper said.

The board would in fact be promoting imported meat, which does not pay the promotional levy paid by domestic pig producers. A board delegation has met the Under-Secretary for Agriculture, Mr Austin, and the Under-Secretary of Trade and Industry, Mr Allen, to ask that imported pigmeat also pay a promotion levy. “Without the extra promotion there would have been a lowering of the schedule to pig farmers and eventually some pig farmers would drop out of the industry,” said Mr Lepper.