POULTRY TOO DEAR

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13813, 26 January 1909, Page 2

POULTRY TOO DEAR

New Jiealailtlcrsi says :i writer in tllo " New' Zealand Times," -have been much accused-of being epicures, but 11ic• fact remains that they always have tlie scrag-end of everything they raise in the tood line. It is the people who buy our products in foreign markets that arc the epicures. Everybody .rushes into print to say what a boon .scientific poultry-raising has been for the poul-try-raisers, but this isn't a national help-. One would like to rush into print to say that a big fat fowl of nameless breed might be bought in Manners or Cuba streets for two shillings. It is a shame to cat such a valuable bird ■as a. fowl, and the facts are that (at least as far as Wellington is concerned) the fowl in the poulterer's shop is regarded as some kind of sacred ornament.

Most poultry sellers arc either sellers of pork or are ordinary beef and mutton purveyors, and all of them sidetracked to the meat market, are told how the break-neck struggle to give Londoners and others choa|> New Zealand food had resulted in dear New Zealand food for the. New Zealander. " Anything we can't sell in -London." said a frank poulterer, as he whett'-d a large knife, and looked malevolently at a harmless pig, .""ran be sold in New Zealand. 'Cos whv? It's all, that s left. You wouldn't dare, for inslan-e. to send a fowl to London with tlie skin burst in half a dozen places,, but it is saleable in Hobson street." One reads that the poultry iudustiA is developing on such good lines thnt a demand has been created at tho door of the producer, who v"ry soom wen t need to send bis birds Home. The fact that all the good birds have been sont Home un to now gives the lie to the oft-repeated statement tlr.t everybody is an epicure in New Zealand. About seven-eighths of the city dwellers in New Zealand eat fowl twice a year, and then onlv because .soin"body is dining with them, and tbev like to d" the thing in style. And tlie occasional poi'ltrv-eatcr, who pays his fne or six shillings with great reluctance asks if the bird hns Wn se-ut.h~.llv "st'.'ffe.T' or whether it is a Langshan, Berkshire or a Clydesdale Orpington, or if it has t>«s*od +be as to whether its feathers were 1111 the rio-ht place. He wants fowl, not flummery a lid e!i< r % not competitions.