MEAT DISTRIBUTION IN ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 2578, 12 August 1903, Page 11

MEAT DISTRIBUTION IN ENGLAND.

It is certainly- unfortunate that the full details of Mr Seddon's meat-selling scheme, as supplied in the report made ■by Mr H. C. Cameron on the improvement of New Zealand meat distribution in the markets of Great Britain, should have been laid on the table of the House just at the time when the announcement of the depletion of the flocks of the colony points to a curtailment, at anyrate for the present, of the frozen •meat export trade. Even if the plans outlined by the Produce Commissioner had in them, the elements of success, this would surely be a singularly inauspicious time to launch them. For a •while, at least, New Zealand's shortage of " sheep is bound to place her at a disadvantage with her competitors. Seeing that we are on the eve of a period, of doubtful duration when this colony ■will find some difficulty in keeping up sufficient supplies of frozen meat to fill the avenues of trade already open, it would be folly of the crassest sort to expend large sums of money in developing new channels of trade, especially when such attempts will be attended by what the Birmingham Daily Post describes as " the certainty of a fierce and costly contest with existing interests," for, as that paper cogently remarks, "it is not to be expected that either the big meat importers or the little butchers will sit with folded arms and hands ■while Mr Seddon is attempting co supersede them." The main plank in the Government scheme is an endeavour to cater for' the high-class trade in the United Kingdom, and thus secuie for New Zealand meat a higher level of prices than that commanded by Aigen±ine and Australian mutton ; but in h's report Mr Cameron appears to iguore the hostility of those already engaged in the business^ It is apparently tseumed that the English butchers will quietly allow the New Zealand Government to trench upon their preserves without any attempt at retaliation. Indeed, the sweet guilelessiiess, almost amounting to Arcadian simplicity, in ■which the future of the meat trade is painted betrays strange disregard of the keenness of modern competition scarcely to be expected from a m?n who occupies the positiou of Produce CominiKiouer.

The New Zealand C4overmnent is pictured as opening butchers' shops in every large town in the Midlands and the Northern counties of England with the avowed object of supplying all the better-class customers with New Zealand meat. The butchers are depicted as at once awakening to the fact that their customers are leaving them owing to having acquired a sudden taste for the frozen mutton sold at the Government depots and as, duly humbled in spirit, going, cap in hand, to their former customers and enticing them back again with the promise to supply New Zealand meat of prime quality at the same price as it can elsewhere be obtained. But we very much mistake the temper of the men at present engaged in the butchering trade at Home if this rosy picture is possible of realisation. It must be remembered that a good deal of New Zealand meat is at present retailed throughout the United Kingdom as home-grown, and, as Mr Cameron himself admits, much of the meat sold at a low price as " New Zealand " is inferior Argentine and Au> tralian mutton. This to a large extent explains what the London Daily Chronicle calls " the deep-rooted but unjustifiable prejudice against frozen meat" ■which exists in the minds of the conservative English middle classes. The opening of Government depots, as suggested, seems likely to be productive of two results: The butcher who at present sells New Zealand meat would incline to boycott the article altogether, and thus it would only be saleable at the same rate as inferior Argentine or Australian to the working-class conbumer. Instead of New Zealand meat increasing its hold upon, the English ttnarket, the demand would probably diminish, and the last state of our frozen meat industry would be wor.se than the first. Or if, for cake of argument, we assume Mr Cameron's contentions to be well founded, on his own showing, as soon as the British butchers under compulsion decide to stock New Zealand meat and supply it to their high-class trade, the depots jstablished at a capital outlay of £2000 apiece will cease to be needed; but how the large amount of capital thus invested is to be realised, except at a c eriou<; los«, is not dhclq&ed. In fac^ ihe whole scheme is

so chimerical as, in our judgment, to be ' quite outside the pale of practical polities. Admittedly the frozen meat industry requires remodelling in many important respects, but such experiments asi outlined in this report are too full of danger to be seriously attempted. Reform should proceed more on the lines hinted at by a correspondent — viz., by reductions in railway and steamer ■freights, so as to enable tho producer to get his meat to market at the minimum of cost. Hand in hand with the reduction of freight should go some efficient system of branding to enable tlie consume!' to identify New Zealand meat as such, and allow the excellent quality of the article to be its own advertisement.