Killing ban urged

Press, 19 May 1984, Page 3

Killing ban urged

Farm editor Freezing companies have been urged by North Canterbury meat and wool farmers to stop all killing of stock while the meat unions' rolling strike threat remains.

The suggestion amounts to a recommendation to meat companies to lock out their workers during the period of rolling strike action.

It was contained in a remit passed unanimously by the annual conference of the meat and wool section of North Canterbury Federated Farmers in Christchurch yesterday.

The conference was also told that meat and wool farming was unprofitable and in Canterbury farmers were diversifying the prodution of thousands of hectares.

Mr Kelvin Coe, of Ellesmere, the vice-chairman of the section, said he estimated that land in Canterbury, capable of carrying 330,000 sheep stock units had been diversified from meat and wool production during 1983. He said IOOOha had gone into dairying, 2000 ha into private forestry, which was the maximum plantings nursery stocks would allow, and perhaps as much as 30,000 ha extra to crops. The conference was told that the chairman of the Meat Board, Mr Adam Begg, had recently warned that the sheepmeats industry would disappear within 10 years if changes were not made in its cost structure and marketing system. Many delegates argued vigorously that meat workers had to be made to see that their wage demands in a high-cost processing industry with indifferent export returns and prospects might result in the death of the industry

which needed urgent reform.

“The turtle does not make progress until he sticks his neck out,” said the chairman of the section, Mr Dick Davison, of Culverden, who was re-elected unopposed to that position.

The conference also said that it wanted a substantial decrease in meat processing charges and suggested that this be 25 per cent. Support was also forthcoming. in the form of a remit, for a recent call by the new chairman of the Meat Industry Council, Mr Reid Jackson, for a study into the meat industry. Reforms could be made by reducing the number of freezing companies, ensuring that hygiene demands were examined critically, spreading stock flow throughout the year, improving transport and wharf handling, and putting insurances through the Meat Board, said the mover of the remit. Mr J. C. McGrouther, of Darfield.

The conference also carried a call for a moratorium on the repayment of the $340 million debt in the Meat Income Stabilisation Account.

Many meat and wool farmers were on the brink of bankruptcy and could not repay such a debt until there was a substantial lift in export returns, said Mr R. E. Menzies, of Banks Peninsula. The Meat Board was also urged to go ahead with plans to render down all uneconomic grades of mutton. A selection should be made at drafting.

A Meat Board member, Mr Mervyn Barnett, of Dunsandel, said that the board was having discussions with a large company on the economic canning of mutton but the rendering of the lower grades seemed the most economic.