SHIPPING CHILLED BEEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19388, 24 July 1926, Page 10

SHIPPING CHILLED BEEF.

The successful delivery of a trial shipment of chilled beef from Brisbane to the Smithfield market is an achievement of great interest to New Zealand as well as to Australia. Almost equally handicapped by distance from the British market, both Australia and New Zealand have suffered severely from the competition of chilled beef from Argentina. The objection to the freezing of beef is not merely that the meat requires thawing before it can be used, but that under present commercial methods the tissues of the meat are so damaged by the actual formation of ice crystals among them that when thawed the beef is inferior to chilled meat. The problem concerns beef only, as mutton and lamb suffer much less deterioration. Experiments have proved that by much more rapid freezing, followed by slow thawing, a substantially more favourable result is obtained, but these methods have not yet been developed into a commercial process. Experiment on a larger scale and under commercial conditions appears now to have established the possibility of carrying beef at the. higher temperature of chilling. The shipment has not been an unqualified success, but the flaws were not serious, and 'their causes have apparently been discovered. The possibilities suggested by this achievement are therefore of outstanding importance. It may be presumed that the process is entirely one of refrigeration, since it can hardly be imagined that any responsible person would embark on further disastrous experiments with chemical treatments. That being so, the new enterprise has only to prove that it is sufficiently economical, and a brighter prospect for the cattle industries of Australia and New Zealand will be revealed.