AMERICA AND MEAT.

Waipa Post, Volume IV, Issue 156, 22 October 1912, Page 4

AMERICA AND MEAT.

MUST SHE IMPORT IT SOON ?

An article which indicates that the United States of America may in the near future have to resort to frozen meat from outside pastoral countries has been forwarded to a prominent local meat firm. The article in question, which deals with the high price of meat, is from the San Francisco Chronicle of September I2th, which journal is understood to be one of the strongest, if not the strongest, protectionist paper in the United States. The article runs as under: —

" It seems evident that the high prices of meat have come to stay. Our best ranges are being rapidly devoted to agriculture, low prices for cattle and high prices for feed for some years depleted the ranges by the marketing of steers at an early age, and, in spite of the high tariff on "wool and mutton, the number of sheep in the country is steadily diminishing. " All the ranges seem now to have all the stock they can properly carry, and nobody can suggest any means of increasing our meat supply except by raising stock on cultivated farms, which means a higher cost. Any reduction of the tariff on wool, and a reduction now seems probable, will tend to still further decrease the number of our sheep. " Under these conditions Germany, which is a highly-protect-ed country, is seriously considering facilitating the introduction of frozen beef from Argentina. Great Britain has long consumed large quantities of frozen meat, both beef and mutton. We may have to do the same for the relief of our people, and it is not believed that even the entire removal of our 6 per cent, tariff on meat would seriously affect the prices of live stock. Probably it would not seriously affect retail prices of meat, but it would be all that can be done in that direction.

It is not our experience that the removal of duties on staple products affects prices. Our markets are so great that they fix the prices, and no importations seem able to affect prices to consumers, except in the case of manufactured goods, where the item of labour is large, or in minor agricultural and other products which are not staples, consumed in large quantities" by all families. When we abolished the duty on coffee there was no change in price. An emergency removal of duiy en bituminous coal had no affect whatever on prices. Hides are higher to-day than when they paid duty. ' Reciprocity ' has had no affect on prices of sugar.' The protectionist, therefore, need not ' view with alarm ' any reduction of the duty on meat which will admit frozen beef and mutton. Nor, on the other hand, have consumers much to hope for. Frozen imported meat never sell at quite the price of domestic meat, even though great quantities of domestic meat are frozen for months before consumption, and consumers never know it.

Whether a reduction of duty on meat will or will not affect prices to consumers can only be known by trial. It would require some time to create a market for imported frozen meat, for our people are finicky, and object to what they are not used to. But there is no doubt that here, as in Germany, there will be a demand from non-producing communities for a trial of imported meat, which Congress, however the election goes, will find it difficult to refuse."