Rendering of mutton outrages industry

Press, 28 May 1983, Page 1

Rendering of mutton outrages industry

Wellington reporter

The decision by the Meat Board to render down into tallow and meat-and-bone meal 1500 tonnes of freezerburnt mutton in Otago has outraged people in the meat industry.

One meat company executive said he was worried that much greater quantities of 1982-killed lamb and mutton might go the same way. Rendering down 1982 mutton involved a loss to New Zealand of $350 a tonne, he said. - i. The Meat Board has decided to render down the 1500 tonnes of Otago mutton to ease pressure on overcrowded cool stores, and because it had been “freezer-burnt” and so is no longer up to export standard.

The mutton is being rendered down into tallow and meat-and-bone meal at three Otago freezing works where pressure on coolstore space is particularly severe.

Only 1 per cent of New Zealand’s total export mutton is involved.

Selling the mutton in New Zealand was considered by the Meat Board, but it decided against this because the meat was only of manufacturing quality, for processing into goods such as sausages. The cost of boning and removing fat from the mutton would be high and as the supplies already available were considerable, demand for the products in New Zealand was limited.

Also, supplementary minimum price payments made on the mutton would have to be paid back to the

Government if the meat was to be sold locally. Exporting it as tallow and meat-and-bone meal would earn foreign exchange. However, the meat companies do not accept the Meat Board’s reasoning. One meat company executive said that 1500 tonnes of mutton in 1982 could have been sold, at what he called “give-away prices,” for $6OO a tonne. The sale would have grossed $900,000. Rendered down, the mutton will become tallow (32.5 per cent), meat-and-bbne meal (18 per cent) and water (49.5 per cent). The water will have no value and will be flushed away as effluent. Tallow is worth $575 a tonne and the 487 tonnes produced from the 1500 tonnes of mutton will be worth $280,312. Meat-and-bone meal is worth $370 a tonne and the 270 tonnes produced will be worth $99,900. People in the meat industry believe the 1500 tonnes will be worth $380,212 in total compared with the $900,000 that could have been realised if it had been sold last year. This amounts to a loss on the sale of $519,782, and the meat industry fears that more than 100,000 tonnes of 1982 lamb and mutton from bulging cool stores that has been spoiled by freezer-burn could go the same way.-

A loss of $350 a tonne on 100,000 tonnes would cost New Zealand $35 million.

The difference would have been less than $350 a tonne if the meat companies had been permitted by the

Meat Board to sell it as pet food or to Third World countries for $4OO a tonne, as they say they could have done.

According to one meat company manager, the Canterbury cool stores are also nearly full of 1982 mutton, some of which is suffering from freezer-burn. This sale was just the first of the sales that would have to be made because the mutton had been stored by the Meat Board instead of being sold, he said.

The meat companies could not have afforded to have stored the mutton for so long had they owned it, he said. They would have been forced to sell it, at a loss, certainly, but not at as great a loss a tonne as the Meat Board was contemplating.

He said the Meat Board could afford to store it, let it deteriorate, and then sell at a loss, because it had the financial backing of the Government.

Meanwhile, Otago freezing workers are buying up the export meat. Union sources said the 1500 tonnes of export mutton included at least 32,000 carcases at the Burnside works alone.

The Burnside freezing workers’ union president, Mr Alex Griffin, said his members had bought 1800 carcasses at $9 each in two days. “It’s good stuff,” said Mr Griffin. Chamber hands were going to refuse to handle the meat because they believed it was wrong to “put good food like that into blood and bone,” he added.