Export prospects for South Island pigmeats

Press, 21 October 1983, Page 29

Export prospects for South Island pigmeats

South Island pig fanners could soon be exploiting the region’s relative diseasefree status and exporting to Australia, the first significant exporting by this hitherto domestic primary industry. Pig herds in the South Island are provisionally free from Aujeszky’s disease, which is a viral disease of pigs affecting the nervous system and which can result in death of young stock. It can also affect other livestock species. Australia is free from the disease and has said it will only import pigmeat from countries or regions in a similar position. The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries is taking steps to prove the disease-free status of the South Island,

according to the chairman of the Pork Industry Board, Mr Denis Lepper. The board met in Christchurch recently. Even if the whole region could not be declared disease-free, it might be possible to export from declared disease-free herds, said Mr Lepper. The Pork Industry Board is keen to facilitate exports to Australia as one way of avoiding a looming oversupply of pork in New Zealand.

The industry’s successful Trim-pork campaign has lifted per capita pork consumption by about 2 per cent (compared with the long-term decline in meat consumption of 15 per cent) but producers have

responded with a 5 per cent lift in sow numbers and hence baconers and porkers produced. The industry operates on a free enterprise system, said Mr Lepper, and the board had no power to intervene to contain production.

Its stabilisation scheme was only of use in a spot over-supply situation and not the general over-supply which might eventuate early next year. Market forces would operate and pig prices could fall. The Trim-pork campaign had done its job so far, he said, in raising the awareness levels among housewives. Now its emphasis would be shifted so that the pro-

motion capitalised on this higher awareness and more attention would be given tc the cutting of pork by butchers and presentation by restaurants.

Three stable years in the pig industry had generated an influx of producers, who now numbered more than 7000, and a drift towards the grain growing areas, although neither of these trends had been encouraged by the board or the previous Pork Industry Council.

However now increasing barley prices might limit the expansion of the industry, said Mr Lepper, by being a deterrent to people wishing to enter.

The board also discussed the forthcoming bacon campaign, which has also been approved in principle by the Bacon Curers and Meat Processors Association. Housewives had been surveyed to ask whether they were buying bacon and the reasons they did not buy.

They were asked what size, colour and packaging etc. they wanted. With the curers, a product specification had been determined to take into account the responses from the survey.

A quality seal would be introduced and promoted and housewives could buy a product carrying this seal knowing that it was uniform and was a quality article. Slaughtering, curing and packing establishments would be inspected to make sure they produced to the standard. Housewives would have recourse through the board for product which was not up to the standard. Mr Lepper said the weight range of baconers was not expected to change. Over the last 10 years grading standards had not changed but the industry had lifted its “prime” output from 48 per cent to 84 per cent of pigs slaughtered. “We have been doing our bit to improve the quality of the product through im-

proved breeding and assisted by a payment for quality grading system,” he said.