DEMAND FOR MEAT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19433, 20 October 1925, Page 9

DEMAND FOR MEAT

OPTOMISTIC OPINIONS. The evidence of the meat trade shows that the period of superabundance in meat supply is past, and probably for ever. The vital factor to-day is the world call for meat. The truth is that the vegetarian has been counted out. Not only is Asia becoming a meat eater, but Continental peoples find meat necessary if they are to keep fit while working hard. And work hard they find they must, if the frightful loss of wealth and material caused by the war is to be repaired. Six years after the war Britain alone is paying her debts and her way. The depreciated money of the entire Continent means harder work for less pay, and the Continental nations are facing the problem manfully. They are working harder, and they are doing the work on increased meat returns. Now wo have to ask ourselves this question: Do meat eaters go back to a poorer diet? Wo know that they do not, and the Continent, as inch by inch it regains prosperity by labour, will rather augment than reduce its daily ounces of beef and pork in summer and winter. The interesting essay contributed by a leading English expert to the current issue of the “Edinburg Review,” sheds a good deal of light on the position of the United States. Prosperity in the inland States is precarious and much controlled by the railway freights, while labour is difficult to hire and farmers’ sons stick less and less to the farm. Cattle are not popular with the poorer men who are the vast majority; nor is this to be wondered at, for Americans are extremely individualistic. If a man’s cattle die, they die. No slaughtering order carries a substantial cheque from State Funds. To a small man a wave of infectious disease means ruin, and where disease is virtually endemic insurance is a burden that makes profit dubious, even in a good year. The American herds are decreasing at the rate of 430,000 yearly; this is slight, of course, but population increases by 2200 a day; the United States, therefore, are buying more and more beef every month, and they are acquiring large interests in Argentina for sheer home needs quite outside speculative investment. The net conclusion is that meat shows every likelihood of increasing steadily in demand, at prices which will afford producers a reasonable profit.