THE GRADING OF MEAT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10018, 14 April 1910, Page 5

THE GRADING OF MEAT.

SOME REASONS WHY THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT UNDERTAKE THE WORK. A subscriber writes—The farmers of New Zealand are deeply interested in securing that the frozen meat trade of the Dominion shall be on , the best lines possible, and it behoves them, therefore, to consider very carefully the resolution recently circulated by a branch of the Gisborne Farmers' Union recommencing that all New Zealand meat should in future be graded by a Government grader. The principal plea brought forward in advocacy of this change is that Government grading of dairy produce having been a success similar results would follow in the case of meat. The proposal is quite an old one, and some years ago the evidence of the most experienced men throughout the eclony was carefully considered by a select committee of the House of Representatives, and the unanimous conclusion arrived at was that it was impossible for the Government to grade meat as satisfactorily as was already being done by the various freezing companies. The reasons were not far to seek. The Government had to admit that if they undertook the worn:, it could only De ,by employing the graders already in theservice of the freezing companies, who had had years oi careful training, and had been kept thoroughly up j to the mark by the constant check kept on their work through the London advices or previous shipments arriving by each mail from the agents who were, of course, always on the alert to detect any fault in the grading. Tbe Government would, of course, haye no such check available, and the quality of the grader's work would inevitably suffer accordingly. It was also pointed out that there was no analogy between the grading of meat and dairy produce. In the case of the latter, milk, the raw material, was practically always the same except as to percentage of ■ the butter fat, and there was no difficulty in enforcing a uniform system of grading applicable to every district in the Dominion. In the case of meat,' however, anyone with knowledge of the subject must be aware of the great varieties of breeds, ranging in the case of sheep from the coarsest Lincolns and Romneys, averaging heavyweights d3wn to the finest quality of light weight Southdown, with every variety of cross between these extremes, making it an absolute impossibility to apply the uniform grad-

ing which rightly obtains in the case of dairy produce. An impression, too, seems to prevail that the freezing c ornpanies have no specific system of grading, by which the meat can be

dealt with on thb.London market as in the case of dairy produce, but there could be no greater mistake than to imagine that this is so, because each company has a system of grading which has been thoroughly well-known for years on the 1 London market, and as to which, except in rare cases, r.o exception whatever has been taken by the buy ers of our meat in London. The grade marks of each freezing company, in New Zealand are, in short, the equivalent of the manufacturer's trade mark, and sales are daily made by cable amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds in value on the sole basis of each company's grade marks, iuEt as in the case of dairy produce graded by the Government. The purchasers of our meat, m London, are, of course, thoroughly familiar with these grade marks, an.l it would, of course, follow that their abolition in favour of Government grade marks would create the \ greatest confusion to everyone concerned in the trade. Th 3 Gisborne Farmers' Freezing Company are comparatively new to the business, and have evidently had some difficulty as to their grading, but they will scion get over their difficulties in that respect, and be very glad indeed,!to find, as I feel sure they will, that the resolution they have circulated will not be en dorsed by the farmers of the Dominion.