BRITISH MEAT TRADE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 133, 12 June 1909, Page 6

BRITISH MEAT TRADE.

CAUSES OF STAGNATION. Mr. A. A. Openshaw, a Manchester butcher in a large wholesale and retail way, arrived by the Wakanui 10-day. His operations included Bolton and other large Lancashire industrial centres, and he was therefore well qualified to speak on the slump in the New Zealand moat trade. To a Post reporter he said low prices weie directly attributable to three causes :—(1): — (1) Cutting Argentine competition, (2) excessive supplies, and (3) restricted purchasing power of the public. "We on the west coast of England must have the meat cheap," he said. "If it is not cbeap we cannot look at it. New Zealand lamb has a great vogue in London. It is very fine, and is sometimes, but not so often as you might believe, substituted for prime Home-grown lamb. Many people are unable to tell the difference. • " Now with regard to Argentine competition, Swifts, the big American meat trust people, are in there. They arc cutting prices ; pushing the meat for all it's worth ; selling it very cheap ; grading it well, and packing it in hrst-class order. It has badly hit Australian mutton and lamb, and is, as a matter of fact, superior. But New Zealand lamb still leads. The mutton is too good, too heavy for our west coast trade. We want a leaner sheep. Just before coming away I bought Australian lamb at 3|d for 301bs average weights. "There is a very big supply of British (home raised) sheep and lambs coming right on top of heavy supplies from Argentine and New Zealand and Australia, and then the people have not the money to buy, cheap as the meat is. What do they eat -when they go off meat ? Fish mostly ; that is cheap when they can get it. To say that cheeso consumption increases as a substitute for meat is an absurdity on the face of it. Cheese is dearer than meat as a substitute. As for the retailer, well, he can do very well with really fine sec-ond-grade Argentine wethers at 2gd. That is what I bought at. But, of course, he wants the turnover. It is not there at present ; things are still c-xtiemely dull throughout the United Kingdom. A great revival of trade in the near future was not apparent when I left London."