Reforms of meat industry advocated by Mr Quigley

Press, 16 June 1983, Page 18

Reforms of meat industry advocated by Mr Quigley

Parliamentary reporter Criticism of the meat industry and calls for reform have been reiterated by the member of Parliament for Rangiora, Mr D. F. Quigley. Addressing a farmers’ conference in Hamilton, Mr Quigley said the creation of the Meat Industry Task Force showed that time to change had all but run out.

He recommended changing the Meat Board, reducing the Ministry of Agriculture’s role in the industry, and adopting new marketing plans. Although the industry was partly the architect of its own decline, it had also to contend with confusing signals from politicians, bureaucrats, and the Meat Board.

“No single party has accepted responsibility for the requirements of the market place,” Mr Quigley said. As an example of confusion in the industry, he cited differences between statements on the rumoured E.E.C. stockinette ban from the Minister of Overseas Trade, Mr Templeton, and the executive director of the Freezing Companies’ Association, Mr P. D. Blomfield. The Minister had likened

news of the ban to being hit with a blackjack, while Mr Blomfield said the industry had been aware of the E.E.C. move away from stockinette.

Mr Quigley said confusion on the issue reflected on the effectiveness of New Zealand’s agricultural intelligence system.

The emphasis on hygiene regulations had diverted attention from protecting access to overseas markets, and had given the Ministry of Agriculture too much authority to override sound management and industrial relations priorities. “The results have been too few New Zealand initiatives in dealing with nontariff barriers, and negligible pressure on meat interests to build a modern, market-oriented industry,” he said.

Organising other world food-exporting countries against quotas and nontariff barriers should be a priority. “Indeed, if we were motivated purely by our own interests, that role should have a priority at least equal to that of reorganising the world’s monetary system,” Mr Quigley said.

Too many political or dip-

lomatic initiatives had been left to a clique of veterinarians only too keen to solve international problems with their own policies and tactics.

That approach had contributed to delays in upgrading plants, to an emphasis on volume throughput instead of market requirements and to distortions in the industry that made it internationally uncompetitive. “It is now time for the Ministry’s role in the market place to be de-em-phasised, and for it once again to become a meatinspection auditor,” Mr Quigley said. “More responsibility for quality assurance should consequently be left to the private sector,” he said.

The Ministry should be a catalyst for changes in the industry based on better plant use.

Fundamental changes to the Meat Board’s structure and objectives were required to enable it to deal with the industry’s weaknesses and inability to change. The board was criticised for failing to push sales of sheepmeat in North America, and for showing little interest in exporting

chilled lamb cuts, canned mutton, and fast-food products. “What Colonel Sanders did for chicken, we should surely be able to do for New Zealand lamb,” Mr Quigley said. He posed eight questions that he said should focus attention on the main issues: ® What should be the meat industry’s main aim? • What type of animal should farms be producing? ® Has the “sale at the farm gate” approach contributed to enabling non-pro-ducers to capture a growing share of the product’s final market price?

• Should the processing works be limited to that role, and if so, how can more competitive processing and killing costs be encouraged? • Should the Meat Producers’ Board be reconstituted, and if so, in what form?

• Are the days of frozen sheepmeat exports coming to an end?

• Why has new technology become a bogyman in the meat industry? • If the process of plant rationalisation and labour shedding has to be accelerated, who should bear the cost?