FROZEN MEAT AT SMITHFIELD

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7915, 26 September 1911, Page 2

FROZEN MEAT AT SMITHFIELD

QUALITY AND HANDLING, Several New Zealand gentlemen interested. in the meat trade have been discussing problems at Smithfield market, trying to get at, amongst other things, a right understanding as to whether New Zealand meat is equal—in a frozen state—to best English and Scotch, anti appraising tho value of Australian and Argentine mutton and. lamb as compared with the production of their own country. In the eating test it is difficult to tell a good New Zealand joint from a joint from a well bred sheep raised at Homo, but when cold the fat of tho former . becomes somewhat hard and chalky, and some say that the flavour is lost.

Mr Thomas MeGibbon (Mataura), Mr Cresswell (Wanganui)-, Mr Richmond (Hawke's Bay) and others with some spare time at their disposal have been pursuing such lines of research at Smithfield. They have carefully compared frozen beef with the fresh Scotch beef from Aberdeen, and, I understand, recognise that the difference in the prices of the two articles is not a!lj-pitticr a matter o£ manipulation! Though this season there has ''ecu, I am informed, a more than usual propoi tion of unfinished stuff from New Zealand, the grade standards of quality have been well maintained. To lessen the rigidity of the standard seriously is to damage the c.i.f. trade. Bone taint has engaged the attention of visitors from the Dominion; shipments of beef from new works are especially liable to this trouble, and some beef imports from New Zealand for years past have been disappointing in this respect. The Gisborne works beef, bv the way, is very much unproved in this respect. Some of the New Zealand visitors have been impressed, in inspecting the carcases on the market, with the advisability of using a stronger cover for the sheep and lambs, and they have also been astonished to see the many and complicated marks imprinted on the wrappers. , S.S. TOKOMARU MANIFEST. In connection with the "marks” question, and my many references thereto, t take the manifest of the Tokouiaru, which docked some time ago, as a test. The meat on board was 9787 sheep and 13,703 lambs, from ports Napier, Gisborne and Wellington. Prom one of the companies the ship received 6749 carcases, and these were split up into 162 different parcels. The lambs were in 28 divisions, tho sheep in 134. There were 64 lots of mutton under 10, and 17 lots of ono carcase only. The marks consisted of letters, numbers and wolds, denoting grades, and an imposing array of these signs in some cases appeared on the wrappers. Without in the least, desiring to interfere with the policy of tho New Zealand meat shippers, I beg to point out, by means of this analysis of the Tokoraaru manifest, how much this system of excessive subdivision of meat cargoes lends itself to tho evils and troubles to which New Zealanders themselves are calling attention. Imagine the handlings to which these parcels of ones and fwos are exposed, as the labourers sort them in desperation in the various stages of the business, and how much risk of soiling, thawing in hot weather) and damage in general knocking about there is.—“Pastoralists’ Review.”