Roast a thing of past, says M.P.

Press, 2 March 1984, Page 9

Roast a thing of past, says M.P.

PA Wellington Red-meat producers are losing as meat-eating patterns change and the roast becomes a thing of the past, according to the Opposition’s spokesman on trade and marketing, Mr M. K. Moore. The world-wide move from consumption of red meats to white meats meant that an urgent reappraisal of meat marketing was needed, he said in Gisborne during Labour’s Added Value campaign. Red-meat producers, and particularly sheepmeat producers, must increase their market share.

Mr Moore said sheepmeat producers in the United States and Europe were seen as New Zealand’s competitors. “They are not. Chicken and Tork producers are our competitors.” He said that the $150,000 which New Zealand spent with sheepmeat producers in the United States to market its meat collectively was “pitiful.”

Most freezing companies had "sat on their hands” as consumption patterns changed, Mr Moore said. “We have to take our products up market and sell new ‘cuts’ and ‘patties,’ “Perhaps the housewife of the future will not cook a leg of lamb but eat it in slices as lamburgers,” he said.