Mutton for the Soviet Union

Press, 2 May 1984, Page 14

Mutton for the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union is a valued customer for New Zealand’s mutton if a somewhat spasmodic one. It is almost impossible, because of the way in which the Soviet Union comes into the mutton market towards the end of the season, to ensure that the meat it buys has not been frozen for more than three months. If the Soviet Union bought mutton in a more regulated way, it would be easier to ship the mutton at regular intervals.

The Soviet Union apparently wants its mutton to be frozen for three months or less and, on the principle that the customer is always right, it deserves to be heeded. In practice, it is not physically possible to supply the mutton in the quantities in which the Soviet Union sometimes requires it through an order placed at the end of the season, and still have the mutton frozen as recently as the Soviet Union would like it. The answer may well be for the Soviet Union to revise the manner in which it places orders. Just why the Soviet Union has bought the requirement to the fore this year is not clear. The Soviet Union does not appear to want much, or any mutton at all, this year. The Soviet Union says that the requirement that the mutton should be shipped within 90 days of slaughter is of long standing. That is as it may be. There appears to be little knowledge of the requirement to date. Some have speculated that it is a negotiating stance on the part of the Soviet Union, but this does not seem to be so. Certainly there is no reason in health or quality for saying that three months should be considered the limit.

The New Zealand seller, Amalgamated Marketing, is selling the mutton to the Soviet Union as it has in years past, acting as an agent for the Meat Boad. One possibility is that staff changes have been made in that part of the Soviet bureaucracy concerned with importing

meat. As President, Mr Yuri Andropov tried to shake up certain parts of the Government. Part of the greater efficiency may be that someone has unearthed these requirements and decided to make them stick. If the outcome of the whole episode is that the Soviet Union enters into a long-term agreement to buy New Zealand mutton, this will be for the better. Hitherto, the Soviet Union has tended to treat new Zealand as a residual supplier of mutton. Whatever the timing of the purchases, the price is far below the cost. Recent prices have been so low that the Meat Board has studiously avoided disclosing just how much is being lost. The sales of mutton to the Soviet Union, and elsewhere, have meant merely that the loss has been lower than having no sale at all. The time is fast approaching when the board will have to make a radical review of how mutton fits into the meat trade. Had it not been for the supplementary minimum prices scheme applying to exports, the radical rethinking might already have been done. As long as there is a chance that the mutton will be exported, the S.M.P.S are paid. The Meat Board is at present negotiating with the Government over mutton and S.M.P.s. One of the suggestions is that some lower-grade mutton should not go through the freezing works. Some of the freezing companies are resisting this and arguing that charges for the slaughter of lambs will be increased to compensate for the loss of the mutton slaughter. In some ways the mutton — most of it from old ewes — may. be regarded as a by-product of the production of lamb meat and wool and the most efficient way of treating the by-product may not be to freeze and export it but to render it down. One of the costlier ways of dealing with the mutton is to freeze it and sell it at a loss to the Soviet Union, or to another country.