THE MEAT INDUSTRY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21828, 15 December 1932, Page 10

THE MEAT INDUSTRY

OPERATIONS IN THE ARGENTINE A NEW ZEALANDER’S IMPRESSIONS. (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, December 14.' The Argentine’s great meat industry was investigated by Mr Robert Sanders, who represented New Zealand at the Sixth International Congress at Buenos Aires. Mr Sanders had excellent opportunities to gauge the immensity of the beef industry. He visited the Anglo Freezing Works outside Buenos Airc s where 6000 bullocks and 10,000 sheep were killed every day, and the Smithfield, Armour and Swift works each killing 4000 bullocks and 6000 sheep a day. A feature of the killing operations was the employment of electricity to stun the animals before killing. As the sheep filed past they were hooked by the legs to a huge steel plate charged with electricity which rendered the animals unconscious. A revolving plate hoisted them on to a chute which conveyed them to the killing department. The electrocution system was admitted by all authorities to be the most humane method in operation in the world. An * estancia, or estate, which runs 60,000 bullocks, all raised from pedigree English stock, was one of the interesting places visited by Mr Sanders. He travelled by motor car for 10 miles across paddocks, and then did not reach the end. Production costs were low, he said. A beast was ready for killing in only two years and a-quarter and alfalfa land was cropped live or six times in the course of a year and from six to 10 years could elapse before another sowing was needed. Labour was ridiculously cheap. Farm labourers lived under most primitive conditions. On one estancia ho found 12,000 bullocks under the care of only six men. “ I cannot see how it is remotely possible for New Zealand to compete with the Argentine in these circumstances,” said Mr Sanders. “ Farming costs nothing like it costs in tin’s country, and the handling of the meat in the enormous freezing works along the River Plate is done with the utmost economy and despatch.” The only comfort was the knowledge that the Argentine was in just as serious difficulties as New Zealand. Land could be bought to-day with all improvements cheaper than it could bo bought 25 years ago. The country was very worried over the Ottawa agreements and the edict of Mussolini that Italy henceforth would take no more meat from the Argentine.

The pork industry in the Argentine Inul grown to tremendous proportions, con* tinned Mr Sanders. One fanner to whom he spoke had 40,000 pigs, and lie said that at one time he was running double that number. The favourite breed was Dnroc Jersey, a Continental pig which was said to breed ‘2O per cent, faster than any other. Mr Sanders saw a number of dairy farms near Buenos Aires, and inspected several cream factories. “'Pbe dairying industry in the Argentine is in a very unsatisfactory state,” he said. The method of milking I saw can only he described as filthy, and it is small wonder that Argentine butter fails to obtain Now Zealand’s price on the London market. If English people saw the conditions prevailing on some of the farms I saw. T doubt if (hey would buy Argentine butter at all. ’Pile prevalence of foot-and-mouth disease is absolutely appalling."