“CARTON MEAT.”

Hokitika Guardian, 15 July 1931, Page 5

“CARTON MEAT.”

AN AMERICAN PROCESS. LONDON, May 29. The statement that “carton meat’’ —meat cut up, transported, and sold in transparent paper packages-—was to ue shipped to itngianu in iarge quantities ironi the United States during the next six months was made at the annual conference of the Journeymen butchers’ -Federation of Great Britain on Monday at Bolton.

•lire speaker, Mr Peter Short, declared that such meat was “one of the most dangerous menaces to the health of the community he had ever known,” and he proposed that the conference should petition the Government to forbid its importation owing to the dangers of its being contaminated “at the source, in transport, and m storage.” According o a member of one of the leading cold storage fims, the carton system has been in operation for some little time in the States, but net to any large extent. The process, he explained, was known as quick freezing The meat, already cut into joints and even into pieces weighing as little as lib, was plunged into a temperature below zero, and was almost instantaneously frozen. The joints and pieces were made up in carton ready for sale.

As regards the effect the consumption of carton meat would have on the health of the community, he had heard of no outcry against it. The butchers had evidently taken fright, fearing that their trade would go, butv personally he thought it would be! a long time before the idea caught on here.