The Daily Telegraph FRIDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1882.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3578, 29 December 1882, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph FRIDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1882.

In quoting from an English paper the other day the fact was stated that England consumes one million eight hundred thousand tons of meat per annum, of which she herself only produces one million two hundred and five thousand tons. This annual deficit of six hundred thousand tons has been hitherto mainly provided for by importaaions from America, but tbis source of supply is drying if it is not already dried up. From the Home and Colonial Mail we learn that " tbe best meat is as dear today in New York, Philadelphia, Haitimore, and Washington, as it is in London." A rise in the price of meat— the same journal of November 3 Bayshas begun to make itself seriously felt in London. Beef and mutton at twelvepence halfpenny and thirteen pence a pound lor the best joints, veal at fourteenpence halfpenny to fifteenpence, rump steak at fifteen or sixteenpence a pound, sweetbreads at from five to six shillings a pair—these are at this moment the ordinary charges of West-end butchers, among whom the cry is universal that meat was never scarcer or harder to get hold of. Breaking of the wontfa of

November last the Mail continues that, "within the last three weeks, the best cuts of bacon have risen from tenpence to a shilling a pound." The question that forces itself upon ua out here is, can we take advantage of this opportunity ? The amount of meat represented by the deficiency of the supply is enormous. It means that England must look outside her own country for the supply of something more than one billion two hundred million pounds of animal food, or, in other words, the carcases of fifteen million of sheep weighing eighty pounds each! The efforts that have as yet been made by this and the neighboring colonies to send frozen cargoes of meat home are puny enough when regarded from the point of view that discloses the enormous quuantities that are wanted, and for which a ready market is open. From tbe high prices ruling in the principal cities of the United States it is evident that that country can do little more than supply her own wants. A substantial supply can only be looked for then from La Plata and Australasia. We do not know to what extent the Cape can compete, but we are certain of this, that no country in the world is so favorably situated as New Zealand for meatproducing. England's necessity should be New Zealand's opportunity, and it rests with our graziers and merchants to develop a trade in frozen meat such as the world has never seen, and could never have foreseen, before. It will tar all the powers of this country to make any appreciable diminution in England's annual meat deficit, and it must necessarily take some considerable time before New Zealand is in a position to export yearly the carcases of millions of fat sheep. But the country is capable of beiog the meat farm of England, if land owners choose to make it so.