A NEW ZEALAND LAMB RELATES ITS LIFE STORY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1715, 11 January 1905, Page 67

A NEW ZEALAND LAMB RELATES ITS LIFE STORY.

Baa! Baa! Baa! In other words, How do you' do? Pleased to meet you. Hope ycu J ve got a good appetite, for I've come all the way from New Zealand to make your acquaintance Till the moment or my.arrival at the freezing works, my life was uneventful. Like the mutton of the Old Country, in companies’ of thousands, we lambs and sheep lived for many months on grass fields of many acres, save for an occasional shearing, free to roam as we pleased. Then arrived the fatal day. There are over forty freszing works in

New Zealand and Australia, and they are s tuaied as near as possible to the sheep runs. into one of these one morning many hundreds of us, innocent and unsuspecting, allowed ourselves to be driven. In the pens we are sorted and counted an-d examined by a Government inspector, and then came the cruellest blow of all. Here I will draw a veil. Two thousand of us were dispatched that day—the average, I understand, for ev ry working day. Leaving the slaughter-house by means of overhead rails, 1 was passed to the

co:ling room, where I was subjected to a very careful examination. Had I been too fat or too lean, or possessed any blemish of any kind, I should have been instantly rejected. Weighing was the next process, and a ticket recording my weight and my particular brand was fastened to me.

In the cooling room I hung for a whole clay, to be passed next into the freezing rooms. This was the last stage preparatory to my long journey, and when concluded I was dressed in a thin, white cotton shirt, upon which were placed the marks of the merchant to whom I was to be sent.

In a few days there were thousands of us awaiting the arrival of the trains to carry us to the port of shipment. Aboard the huge liner, in the hold of which I was now stowed, together with as many as 100,000 sheep, the cold air chambers were kept at a temperature of 15 degrees below freezing point. More than 150 vessels travel backwards and forwards carrying nothing except frozen meat. 1

In the larger steamships so many as 150,000 sheep, packed literally from stem to stern, are sometimes carried on the journey of fifty days. Sailing vessels, however, take twice as long. And so I came to London. Altogether over 5,000,000 frozen sheep are imported annually into the docks of the great city —the Victoria Dock® have a cold storage capacity for 500,000 sheep, and the West India Docks for 300,000 sheep, to mention but two —while quite as many carcases find their way into Liverpool, Glasgow, and other ports. On arrival in the Thames thousands of us were transferred into insulated lighters and conveyed to the various storage depots. It was my lot to he taken to Nelson’s Wharf, Lambeth, and a more extraordinary building I have never seen. It is six storej's high, yet without a door or window on any side. Instead of entering by the ground floor

I was carried to the roof from the lighter by an endless chain, capable of carrying 12,000 bundles an hour. By the roof is the only way you can enter the building, and the reason for this is that by this means the warm, external air is prevented from entering, and the cold air from escaping. Down some narrow stairs, closely barred by heavy, tight-fitting, iron doors, I was carried to the interior of the building, and in one of the rooms I was finally deposited. It was a strange place. Hundreds and thousands of frozen sheep were grouped about, all gleaming white, while in the corners Avere snow-. Yet outside it was eighty in the shade! The workers inside the cold storage were clothed in fur, with special coverings for their ears and hands to prevent frostbite.

During the next few weeks my life in the cold store was uneventful. My flesh was as hard as iron, and showed no change, desjfite tils thousands of miles I had travelled, from my appearance when first frozen.

Then, one day, together with many others, I was carted away to the thawing chambers. I was to be got ready for the butcher—and you. The “defrosting” process, us it is called, is a most difficult one. Unless done carefully, the meat is sodden and the flavour spoilt. Accordingly, on a machine, which resembled nothing so much as a round-about you see at a fair, a number of carcases were placed. This travelled round at about eight miles an hour for five hours, effectually defrosting us and expelling all undue moisture.

The older and more general process is to keep the sheep in a room whose temperature is gra-dually raised till it reaches 60 degrees. If properly thawed. New Zealand mutton will be dry and well set, will appear to the touch and eye like fresh home-killed meat, and will eat like it. And now, chopped up into joints, I am hanging from several hooks in a butcher’s window, waiting to be bought.