MY COUNTRY NOTEBOOK

Otago Witness, Issue 3860, 6 March 1928, Page 23

MY COUNTRY NOTEBOOK

By

MURIHIKU.

(Special foe the Otago Witness.) The price of bacon and the encouragement of the pig-farming business in New Zealand has -a fair share of the public press these days. And now the Government statistician evidently considers the pig of national importance, for the “Abstract- of Statistics” for- January bursts forth in half a dozen pages of closely-packed facts and figures. This expert officer. Jias a perfect passion for figures, and indulges in it to the full every month—not always about such interesting subjects as pigs, however. .* . * The high cost of living in this country is often deplored, but according to our Wellington calculating machine, things here are comparatively low. The relative retail price levels in four other countries, compared .with New Zealand (100) are as follows for 1927 :—- Australia 11l South Africa 118 Canada 129 United States 141 ■ir * There has been a good deal of writing and discussion as to the prices received at Burnside for pigs and the high prices for bacon in the retailers’ shops. Where the statistician gets his figures from I know not. But there is a vast difference between the wholesale price of 11 id per pound and the Is 5d asked for one pound of bacon. But let the story be told as the official mind sees it:—

“ The average wholesale prices for ham and. bacon in the four chief centres over the last five calendar years are given hereunder: —

Ham (per lb). Bacon (per lb) d. d. 1923 13$ 11J 1924 .. 13$ 12$ 1925 . . 13J 11? 1926 .. 14$ 13J 1927 .. 141 11J

“ The most outstanding feature in the above table is the high price ruling for bacon in 1926, the average price for that year being 20 per cent, above the level of 1923. In 1927 the price fell again to only id per pound over that ruling in 1923.” Farmers —and consumers—will consider that the “ most outstanding feature ” is the great spread between wholesale and retail prices. ■» * * Touching on the export of frozen pork to the United Kingdom, the figures showing the value of our exports to the Homeland are of interest at the present juncture :— £ 1923 94,629 1924 25.159 1925 143,358 1926 -.. ..- .. .. 258,825 1927 .. 283,399 •Jr ty Our reciprocal treaty with Australia is rapidly degenerating into a farce. The fact is that two countries wljich produce the same class of commouies cannot have reciprocity—they have rivalry ’ustead. While the bulk of our frozen pork has gone Home, the main destination of our cured ham and bacon has been Australia. But their proposed new tariff may cause that export trade of ours to di >p. In the past five years it has been worth an average of £20,000 a year to Dominion pig growers. The Australian bacon, butter, and potato markets appear to be absolutely barred to us.

The Government subsidy to the pork industry still appears to excite some comment, particularly in the North Island. But it appears that many co-operative dairy companies are now arranging for pooling their shipments, and so taking advantage of the shipping subsidy of id per pound towards the freight. But in New Zealand practice there is still too much inefficiency and waste. The Department -of Scientific Research could get to work very profitably in devising or suggesting uses for the by-products of the New Zealand pig. In order to compete we must cut cur costs as much as we possibly can.

As old Gorgon Graham said in those famous “ Letters to His Son,” “ I started business in a shanty, and I’ve expanded it into talf a mile of factories; I Beran with 16 men working for me, and I’ll quit with 10,000. I found the American hog in a mud puddle, without a beauty spot on him except the curl in his tail, and I’m leaving him packed in fancy cans and cases, with gold medals hung all over him.” It Was Mr Foster Fraser who first drew attention to the efficiency of the Chicago meat packers, and his description of the many ingenious methods of saving everything but the squeal is still graphically remembered by many of us.

There is very little waste in American practice. I have been looking through their estimates in regard to their killing weights, and find that, according to their figures, a hog weighing 2501 b yields 2.25 per cent., or 5.621 b of his carcass in edible by-products; the careass yields 3.75, or 9.381 b, of non-edible by-prodnets; the carcass shrinks 20.5 per cent., or 51.251 b, in the processes of slaughtering.

In America, the parts lists as edible by-products are leaf lard, liver, heart, kidneys, giblet meat, tongue, cheek meat, jaw meat, brains, prime steam lard, and Among the edible by-products

of the hog are pepsin, derived from the stomach; livers, used in the manufacture of liver sausage; and neutral, a speciallyprepared lard largely used as an ingredient of oleomargarine. Lard proper is not commonly considered a by-product. Nearly 15 per cent, of the live weight goes into lard. Part of this lard is further processed into lard oil used for illuminating purposes and as a lubricant, and into stearin, used in the manufacture of chewing gum and soft candies.

What we throw away the American canners sell at fancy prices. The brains are packed in cans, frozen, and offered for sale; tongues are canned or pickled; hearts go into sausage; tails, snouts, and ears are rich in gelatin or glue; kidneys are canned or frozen; milts or spleens are used as a feed for growing fishes at fish hatcheries; the intestines are cleaned, processed, and made into chitterlings, a food product fried like oysters; stomachs are used as sausage containers—what we in New Zealand call “ casings.”

The parts comprising inedible byproducts are ear drums, first-grade brown grease, nasal tips, grindings, viscera, head, pressed tankage, dry blood, hair, and bristle. These inedible raw byproducts are manufactured into glue, soap, glycerine, biood meal, curled hair, and fertiliser material. Even the rinds from skinned hams and bacon, as well as the back skin of the hog, are utilised for leather, so that it is quite evident that what we to a large extent waste the American gets his profit out of. These are all considerations when it comes to competing with a trade rival.

If we arc ever going to compete seriously with our American friends we will have to get some old chap like Hamilton Huggins into the New Zealand end of the business. Old Ham studied the fine points: “ Before he came along, the heft of the beef, hearts went into the fertiliser tank, but he reasoned out that they weren’t really tough, but that their firmness was due to the fact that the meat ii. them was naturally condensed, and so he started putting them in his celebrated condensed mince-meat at 10 cents a pound.”

But old Ham didn't stop at mincemeat. He was a man with imagination. “He took his pigs’ livers, too. and worked ’em up into a genuine ‘ Strasburg pate de foie gras ’ that made the wild geese honk when they flew over his packing house.” He also discovered that a little chopped cheek meat at two cents a pound was much more profitable (“healthier,” he said) than chopped pork at six cents. And he rather prided himself on the fact that by running 25 per cent, of the cheaper meat into his pork sausage he saved a hundred thousand people every year from becoming cantankerous old dyspeptics! We in New Zealand certainly have a long way to go before we learn all the niceties of this pig-curing business.