Chilled Beef

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 106, 7 May 1938, Page 9

Chilled Beef

DOMINION COMPETITION LONDON, April 9. The increasing competition of chilled beet from the Dominions was referred to by Sir James Caird, chairman of the Smithfield and Argentine Meat Company, at the annual meeting this week. In addition to chilled beef from New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, he said, the past year had seen the entry into Smithfield market of Canadian chilled beef. Some of it was of very good quality. Commenting on the-trade outlook, Sir James said that if the extraordinary employment phase of 1937 —caused principally by rearmament speeding-up —died down, and the consequent abnormal demands of last year for beef, with the exceptional ability of the people to pay for it, ceased, it might well mean the loss of the higher average of 3d per lb. paid on Argentine chilled beef last year. This 3d had just paid the British impost of 3d per lb. imposed since December, 1936. At the end of last mouth, at a meeting in London of the National Federation of Meat Trades’ Association, it was decided to draw tho British Government's attention to the fact that tho spending capacity of the public was little improved, and that the prices of meat were- becoming too high for tho people. As evidence of this, it was pointed out that, in Manchester and Salford alone in the last 18 months, 150 butchers ’ shops had closed becauso they were unable to pass on to the consumer the higher cost of meat. There were indications elsewhere of the slowing down of business in 1938 as compared with 1937, said Sir James. In the shipbuilding industry, which was generally taken as a good barometer of business progress, for months past the orders booked for now mercantile tonnage could almost be counted on one hand.