FROZEN PORK FOR BACON

Taranaki Daily News, 8 June 1932, Page 16

FROZEN PORK FOR BACON

EXPERIMENTS AT CAMBRIDGE. Scientific experiments in progress at the Low Temperature Research Station at Cambridge, England, under the' Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, have proved that frozen pork which has been stored for a longer period than would be necessary to send it to Great Britain from Australia and New Zealand can still be made into very good bacon. It was with the object of finding out exactly how far frozen pig meat is liable to deterioration in cold storage during transport, and the best ways of bringing it over from the Dominions, that an investigation was started. It was carried out at Cambridge, where there is one of the best equipped low temperature laboratories in the world. This is Government-owned, and js supported partly by grants from the Empire Marketing Board. It has been definitely shown by scientific work that mild-cured bacon cannot *yet be satisfactorily transported over long distances. So far no simple way has been found of preventing the fat turning rancid after about six to eight weeks’ storage. The alternative, however, gives satisfactory results. Bacon fully as good as the Dutch, and very little inferior to the Danish, can be made in Britain from meat sent from Australia and New Zealand as frozen pork. There is no reason, moreover,, why the quality should not be improved by more care at each stage of pig production and of transport and storage of frozen carcases. Australia and New Zealand are now Britain's chief sources of supply of frozen pork. As the dairy industry expands in the two Dominions, the disposal of surplus pigs will become increasingly important, and the frozen pork trade is likely to grow steadily.