CHILLED BEEF

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 23, 27 July 1933, Page 11

CHILLED BEEF

AUSTRALIA TO ACT

NEW ZEALAND EXPERIMENT

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, July 20. In foreshadowing action by the Federal Government to assist the establishment of the chilled beef trade, Ministers have made special reference to the experimental shipment by New Zealand in tho Port Fairy. This was due- to reach London oarly this week, and reports as to its condition and the way in which it was received are anxiously awaited, for they will have an important bearing on the future of the meat trade of Australia. Tho Minister of Commerce is calling a conference of departmental experts and others, and this will take placo in Melbourne very soon. Full reports of tho New Zealand shipment will be available at that conference.

Tho New Zealand beef is being carried in an atmosphere containing carbon dioxide, the object of which'is to suppress mierobal growth. Senator MeLachlan, Minister in-Charge of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, said that experiments had been carried out in Brisbano on the storage- of chilled beef at the council's food preservation, laboratory, which was run in conjunction with the Queensland Meat Indnstry Board. Those experiments had indicated that, when concentrations of carbon dioxide of 10 per cent, to 12 per cent, were employed in the storage atmosphere, beef would keep in good condition for upwards oil sixty days. Such a period of storage would be ample to ensure safe transport to England.

One marked advantage of employing carbon dioxide for suppressing bacterial and mould growth, said the Minister, was that it was unnecessary to employ forced air circulation during storage, and tho bloom of tho meat therefore was not impaired to any material extent. Further experimental work was proceeding on various details on which information was necessary before it was possiblo to proceed with regular shipments on a commercial scale. However, it" must bo obvious that Australian work on this highly important economic problem was well advanced. The council could speak with confidence in its results, becauso they had been built up on a prolonged study of tho growth of micro-organisms at low temperature, and the main typos and sources of infection during the dressing and handling of the beef. They had been substantiated by three separate types of experiment—the storage of quarters of beef, the growth of many types of moulds, bacteria inoculated on sterile tubes of meat, and the growth of many organisms in artificial cultures. The Australian experiments were well up to those of any other country, and the portents were encouraging. If Australia could get chilled beef to the London market it would give a tremendous impetus to tho beef cattle industry.

Such of the entile news on tfits papte «s Is so headed has appeared in "The Times" and Is cabled to Australia and New Zealand l>r special permission. It should he understood that the opinions are not those of "The Times unless expressly stated to be so.