FROZEN MEAT TRADE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 19 June 1913, Page 5

FROZEN MEAT TRADE.

The Hon. Thomas Mackenzie, High Commissioner for ±>ew Zealand, was present at the dinner of the Cold Storage and lee Association at the Hotel Cecil last, Wednesday, and responded to the' toast of "Refrigeration and the British Dominions Overseas." A previous speaker had remarked (says the London correspondent of the Auckland Star, writing 011 May 9) that the farmers of England were' now reconciled to the frozen produce trade. Air Mackenzie said he thought it was a pity that there, should ever have been any doubt in the mind of the British farmer' in connection with the work of refrigeration and the importation of meat and other foodstuffs from beyond the seas. Were Britain capable of feeding her own people, and the importation of food threatened to destroy the agricultural industry, there would have been a reason for objecting; but it was not so. The importation of frozen meat had not lessened Britain's own meat supplies of Home grown • on the contrary, they had increased from 1,057,000 to 1,270,000 tons. The increase in frozen meat during the same period was from 533,000 tons to 1,034,000 tons. The adoption of the freezing process had enabled surplus food to be conveyed from where there was a plethora to where there was a paucity. Its adoption had caused British possessions to develop enormously. That meant increased British trade, and the great bulk of her increasing exports went to her own people across the seas, so that we mutually benefited by the frozen industrj*. , Regarding the future, Mr Mackenzie considered that it was full of promise from a producer's point of view. Countries which had been meat exporting were, owing to the increase in thenpopulation.- changing into meat importing countries. 'He thought that the time was not far distant when the working people of the Continent would demand the removal of the lestrictions which prevented their obtaining wholesome food at reasonable rates ■ and there was no meat that was so pure and so free from all taint as that which was shipped from New Zealand.