BETTER MEAT

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 107, 19 April 1933, Page 4

BETTER MEAT

CATERING FOR THE PUBLIC. SMALL JOINTS FOR SMALL FAMILIES. With the continual cry for improvement of our beef, we are inclined to forget Just what the consumer wants. The consumer buys the meat, and it is for him or her to decide what suits best. The following letter, appearing in the •‘British Farmer and Stockbreeder,” indicates the trend of the British market to-day:— ‘‘One of the objects of improving stock for meat purposes is to produce joints that the consumer wants; stockbreeding has to keep pace with the times and alter its product to suit public demand. With the large family, the large joint, and so the large animal, has gone; in place of the ton ox we now have the baby beefling. It is by means of the carcase competitions that the consumers’ requirements are, through the agency of the butchers who judge, put before the breeders and feeders. ‘‘lt is true that many of the meat qualities of the animal can be judged by outward appearance, as is done in the live classes. But, just as with barley, although much can be told by looking at the outside, a great deal more is found out when it is cut through. For example, public taste during the last 20 years has changed towards a typo of carcase with more lean meat and less fat, and one of the great difficulties in judging the live animal is to tell how much of the earcase will be Jean meat and how much fat. In the old days, when nearly all the animals were fattened on linseed cake, one could tell what was fat by the soft touch. But now many of our feeders have become so expert that they can, by fattening on substances rich in carbohydrates (such at oats) instead of oil cakes or grass, produce a firm fat which outwardly feals like muscle or lean meat. ‘ ‘ Many people will no doubt say that they can tell, by ‘handling’ the animal, how it is going to kill. They have their own ideas as to what are the main points of a moat animal, and some of these are mentioned below. The more

of these ideas we can collect and put to the test the more efficient will b» our system of live stock judging in the future. “With all stock there is a tendency for the butchers to favour small joints and animals with a large loin in proportion to head, neck and legs. A comparatively short face and cannon bones (from the knee downwards) is generally associated with short bones throughout the body, and consequenUy with thick, blocky joints which th* butcher requires. In such animals tha meat comes well down to the hocks, it is the quality of blockiness that makes the Southdown ram and AberdeenAngus bull so useful in crossing with large-coarse-boned stock. “With all stock, too, one requires a light forequarter as compared with hindquarter; an animal deep in front and shallow behind will give a carcase with a high proportion of the low-priced cuts, and is, therefore, not required. A good, straight underline comes second only to a good, straight top line, with great width across the loin—the most valuable part. The line from hip to shoulder should be perfectly straight and well filled out in order to give a deep ‘eye’ of meat on the loin. “The great difficulty is to know how much of this width of loin in the live animal is fat and how much is lean. It can be done by‘touch if the fat is soft, but, as pointed out above, a good feeder can make the fat hard like muscle. “Softness of fat is usually first apparent behind the shoulders and on the pin-bones. Others look at the taii in cattle and say that if it is thick there will be a good depth of lean meat, but if the tail is thin then the carcase will be liable to cut fat.”