THE FROZEN MEAT TRADE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3415, 29 August 1919, Page 12

THE FROZEN MEAT TRADE.

SERIOUS COMPETITION BY CHILLED MEAT. QUALITY MUST BE IMPROVED. (Fbom. Otjb Special Cobbesfondent.) LONDON, June 24. _ The home meat-raiser in Great Britain will in future have put at his disposal means by which his meat can be prepared and marketed under conditions more approaching those by which overseas meat finds its way to the English consumer, both as regards central mustering of supplies and also regular attention to hygiene in killing and handling methods. A prominent undertaking now about to commence operations on these lines in. Ireland is the Irish Packing Company, whose programme of transforming Ireland's live-cattle export trade into a local killing and dead-freight business I have already described in this column. Doubtless other enterprises will arise to gather and economically handle stock from considerable surrounding areas, and one such undertaking of this character is to be launched by a new company about to be floated under the title of the Improved Chilling and Transport Company (Ltd.). This concern is to have a capital of £700,000. It will acquire, among other things, the Linley process of meat sterilisation formerly exhibited by the Improved Chilling Company, and responsible for carrying one million and a-quarter quarters of chilled beef from South America to Great Britain. This company will erect and operate in Great Britain at approved centres, killing stations for cattle, sheep, and pigs, 'on the lines so profitably followed in South and North America and AustraJasia. The first of these cattle factories is to be on a site near Norwich on the River Yare, where a modern killing station will be erected, having a capacity of about 200 head of cattle a day. with arrangements for extension. The station and plant are to cost about £IOO,OOO, and it is intended to start work in six months' time. The prospectus contemplated, on a conservative estimate, a i.et profit of between £3 and £4 per head of cattle killed, which, on an output of 100 head per diem for 200 dayo a year, works out at an annual profit of £60,000. This is independent of sheep and pig- killing. The comoany apparently relies on up-to-date methods and nropcr utilisation of by-pro-ducts for the promise of this enterprise, and it will apparently market the_ meat in a fresh, soft condition under the Linley process, which extends its lustre and keeping qualities. There is no doubt that enterprises • like the above- in the Old Country have an interest for Dominion producers, inasmuch as they point to the home farmer being awakened to exploit his advantageous position with more up-to-date methods. He is in a powerful position for so doing just now, and his proportion of 65 per cent, of the total meat supply of the Kingdom, which was the case before the war, may be increased by this means. This consideration leads one to bring forward again mention of the great influence which _ quality and condition will have in securing premier place and profit for meat exports in the future. During the war this factor has almost entirely fallen, but it will operate more than ever in the years ahead. Then, more important still, perhaps, there is the necessity of the New Zealander and Australian finding some means of bringing over their meat to Europe in a soft, unfrozen condition if they are to compete on level terms with Argentina, Canada, and South Africa. I have before now mentioned the well-founded view that Franco will never take kindly to frozen meat, because the

national babio of cooking among the masses of the population is that of the boiling-pot, in which frozen meat, of course, goes to shreds. These matters are those which underlie problems of success or failure in the era of keen competition ahead, and New Zealahders would do well to heed them.