AUSTRALIA'S BID

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 144, 19 June 1936, Page 14

AUSTRALIA'S BID

EAT LAMB TRADE

CHALLENGE TO NEW ZEALAND

(Special to the "Evening Post."> ' PALMERSTON N., This Day.

Dominion livestock breeders recently in Australia have returned very much impressed with the improved quality of the Commonwealth's cattle and sheep and concerned over the organised effort of breeders across the Tasman to capture a leading position in the matter of quality of b'oth lamb and beef.

"We are shaping for a nasty bump," remarked one widely-known sheep breeder when discussing the Australian position yesterday, "and unless those interested in the lamb industry are prepared to sit up and take notice of what our Australian competitors are doing, we can say good-bye to our supremacy in the fat lamb trade on the London market. The position Australia has reached in her efforts to produce high quality lamb is such as to give us cause for serious concern and my conviction is that we must, without further delay, seriously tackle the problem of improving the quality of our flocks to enable us to meet the challenge."

This considered comment by one intimately associated with stud sheep breeding will not surprise those who have repeatedly directed attention to the disinterested attitude of the general run of those engaged in sheep grazing and wool growing to the necessity for the maintenance of quality, but it will be disturbing to the majority if they are prepared to accept the unvarnished truth concerning the Australian position. Slow to awaken to an appreciation of all that science has offered the industry, the general run of sheep farmers have plodded on steeped in an ignorance, that shelters ■behind the price factor- of their produce.

Ewe fair activities are marked by an almost complete absence of any studied appreciation of the peril to the fat lamb industry of low-conditioned and generally inferior quality ewes. Each ewe fair, with its indiscriminate offering of sheep culled from, flocks of every description, strikes a blow at the efforts of stud sheep breeders to remove; the cause of the varying quality of both lamb and .wool. It would appear that more is required in the way of Government action if the quality of our lamb and mutton along with the. standard of our flocks is to he, maintained and improved. /