FROZEN MEAT

Timaru Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 2926, 3 February 1899, Page 4

FROZEN MEAT

A Sonlh Canterbury friend now at Home s^nda as a copy of the London Evening Neivs of December 19th, with the following item marked :— Batchers are openly accused of defrauding their customers by selling imported meat on the representation that it is the best English, and thus obtain an enhanced profit. With the desire of ascertaining what basis, if any, exists for this assertion, an Earning Netos representative has prosecuted inquiries among the host of bluesmocked butchers who throng the fcSmithfield Meat Market, bnt without any very satisfactory result. It is a trade secret, and each and everyone denied the soft impeachment, but admitted that such practices might exist, with the added plea that it might not operate to the disadvantage of the buyer, or Rive the retailer larger profit than he would gain if he really sold English meat. One wholesale dealer m a large way of business, however, was more candid. uls foreign meat sold as English ?" said he, repeating the ques tion put to him. " Well, I should certainly say it is— tons of it—sometimes with the full knowledge that it is not home bred, and sometimes m ignorance. It is nowadays very difficult indeed even for a thoroughly experienced butcher to tell imported meat from English. The fact is that breeders m America, Canada, and Australia during the past score of years have so successfully introduced English pedigree stock into their herds that they - have raised them to a marvellous pitch of excellence, and the meat now sent over is more like English than anything else, and ofttimes vastly superior to that sent to market by some British farmers. With this great improvement the price of the best imported meat is well kept up, and is generally as high as that obtained for English meat. Then, so keen is the competition between the foreign impor ters and the home grower, that English meat has had to come down m price to that obtained for the average beasts killed at Deptford, Liverpool, etc. So that if the butcher purchases the best imported meat and sells it as homegrown, he does not make any more profit, and often gives the customer a superior joint. He calls it English because he knows his customer is prejudiced against the foreign product. Then, again, he may not know that he is selling imported meat. I'll give you an instance. Some Dutch lambs could not find a purchaser. Scotch lambs were wanted, and nothing else. The imported animals were j thereupon despatched to Glasgow and returned as Scotch lambs and fetched j double the price, the purchaser — a qualified butcher— not knowing any difference. What's more, the market is becoming more foreign every day. Go any morning to Smithfield, and, if you took away all the imported meat, you would not find sufficient English to supply a couple of good-sized stalls. The importer is cutting the British farmer out on all sides so far as the Metropolis is concerned. You needn't think that all the foreign meat is sold as English. The bulk of it is publicly described as what it is, and the taste for it, as compared with that for English, is spreading rapidly. People found their dislike to imported meat on the supposition that the chilling destroys the nutritious properties of the meat. Why does it not do the same to British meat? It is kept chilled more often than not before it is sold. Where is there a butcher doing any trade who has not a cool place to keep his meat m, especially m the hot weather ?" And with this query the intervipwer's informant turned again to the tricks of his trade.