ARGENTINE MEAT

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 70, 15 December 1932, Page 10

ARGENTINE MEAT

Immensity of Industry HUMANE KILLING Electricity Stuns Animal Dominion Special Service. Auckland, Dec. 14. Argentine’s great meat industry was investigated by Mr. Robert Sanders, who represented New Zealand at the Sixth International Congress at Buenos Aires. Mr. Sanders had splendid opportunities to gauge the immensity of the beef industry. He visited the Anglo Freezing Works outside Buenos Aires, where 6000 bullocks and 10,000 sheep are killed every day, and the Smithfield, Armour, and Swift works each killing 4000 bullocks and 6000 sheep a day. A feature of the killing operations was the employment of electricity to stun animals before killing. As the sheep filed past they were hooked by the legs to a huge steel plate, charged with electricity, which rendered the animals unconscious. A revolving plate hoisted them on to a chute, which conveyed them to the killing department. Tlie electrocution system was admitted by all authorities to be the most humane method in operation in the world. Enormous Paddocks. An estancia, or estate, which runs 60,000 bullocks all raised from pedigree English stock was one of the interesting places visited by Mr. Sanders. He travelled by motor-car for ten miles across paddocks and then did not reach the end. Production costs were wonderfully low, he said. The beast was ready for killing in only 21 years, and alfalfa land cropped five or six times in the course of a year, and from six to ten years could elapse before another sowing was needed. Labour was ridiculously cheap, farm labourers living under most primitive conditions. On one estancia he found 12,000 bullocks under th ecare of only six men. “I cannot see how it is reinotely possible for New Zealand to compete with Argentine under these circumstances,” said Mr. Sanders. “Farming costs nothing like it costs in this country, and the handling of meat in enormous freezing works along the River Plate is done with the utmost economy and dispatch. The only comfort is the knowledge that the Argentine is in just as serious difficulties as New Zealand. Land could be bought to-day with all improvements cheaper than it could be bought 25 years ago. Worried Over Ottawa. 'The country, said Mr. Sanders, was very worried over the Ottawa agreements, and the edict of Mussolini that Italy henceforth would take no more meat from the Argentine. The pork industry in the Argentine had grown to. tremendous proportions, he continued. One farmer he spoke to had 40,000 pigs, and he said at one time lie was running double that number. The favourite breed was the.Duroc Jersey, a continental pig which was said to breed 20 per cent, faster than any other. Mr. Sanders saw a number of dairy farms near Buenos Aires, and inspected several cream factories. The dairying industry in the Argentine is in a very unsatisfactory. state, lie said. “The method of milking I saw can only be described.as filthy, and it is small wonder that Argentine butter fails to obtain New Zealand’s price on the London market. If the English people saw the conditions prevailing on some of the farms I saw I doubt if they would buy Argentine butter at all. The prevalence of foot-and-mouth disease is absolutely appalling.