AMERICA'S MEAT PROSPECTS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1095, 6 April 1911, Page 8

AMERICA'S MEAT PROSPECTS.

• VAST .QUANTITIES'BEING ■ ■CONSUMED.. The. "Live Stock Journal" gives the following account of the state of the meat tracts*:— ■.■.'■ ■ •■ "Marketing of fat cattle has been heavy and constant since the new year began. The .movement has been freighted with beef, and the outlet channels, have been more, or less congested.' owing to unseasonable weather; but every pound of the product has found a purchaser. Distributors are not storing beef. When a few tons accumulate' they . desert . the cattle market. Beef consumption never before reached present proportions in the United States,- despite unseasLnnble weather and the handicap of ■ high ' retail cost. ■ . ..-..' ~• ; ' ''"With- hog product it;is the'same-story. January, normally/a-month of accumulation; iii packers" cellars, created no piles of meat. A supply considerably, in ex-, cess of that of last year piactically all vent into consumptive channels "with alacrity. On February 1 the principal packing points of the West did not-re-, ceive enough hogs to increase stocks' perceptibly after ordinary consumptive channels had been supplied with daily requirements. "More than a million fat sheep and lambs are reaching the principal receiving points each month at" present, and 95 T>cr cent, of this run is going into killers' hands. It is a. crop of fit stock offering scant' picking to feeders. This approximation does not include mutton killed at interior points, which must be of considerable volume. ...'■' "In the aggregate, vast Quantities of beef, pork, and mutton are being eaten daily. So far as these commodities are concerned, cold storage is not a factor "in controlling supply or' determining nrices. The nation is o'n a hand-to-mouth suonly basis, and any nlaterial curtailment "in supply will result in prompt appreciation in-values. -The nrticlcis going into-• consumption as fast ps killers can put it in marketable shape."