"EAT MORE BEEF"

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 108, 8 May 1923, Page 5

"EAT MORE BEEF"

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir,—Allow me a little space in your columns to voice my opinion on the several letters appearing in your paper recently re our beef. In the first place, one mentions that only by selling cow beef as well as ox can he quote a reasonable price. As one in the trade, allow me to contradict this. Ox beef, on the market at the present time, is cheaper than cow. As an instance, at Johnsonville fat stock sale recently, fat bullocks weighing about 750 were sold at . £7 15s, while cows weighing about 580 were sold at £5 16s. The hide of the ox is worth 70 to 80 per cent, more than that of the cow, and the cost of killing, travelling, etc., are the same, so that it will be seen that ox beef is cheaper. Now as 80 per cent, of shoppers will ask for a four or five pounds' rib of beef, which can only be cut profitably from a smaller carcaes, cow beef, or light ox beef, is used. Now, in reply to "Quality First," let him stand behind a block and cut the extra prime quality he speaks of to the public generally, and he will be greatly surprised at the knock-back he will receive from the purchasers, "Oh, that is too fat, I will try something else." This is what happens, beef or mutton, with 80 per cent, of shoppers. "Quality First" speaks of obtaining a joint of beef in Palmerston North, where it may be mentioned that 'a large number of cows are killed in proportion than in Wellington, and it's a hundred to one he got a piece of one. Another correspondent writes complaining of the price. Well, if he can sell the quality that is being sold in Wellington, which it better to-day than it has been.in the past, at a cheaper rate there are many that would pay him a very large salary. He would, without the shadow 01. a doubt, be trying the impossible. No, sir, beef and mutton, particularly beef, is being retailed in this city far too cheap to be any good to the growers. Price-cutting, no doubt, has a bit to do with it, and not the quality or the class, which is of the best. In referring, in closing, to the rejected beef or mutton one mentioned, I may point out that in many cases they are absolutely the primest quality that could be grown on the ■ finest pastures in New Zealand.—l am, etc., BLAME THE COOK. 7th May.