MEAT AND STOCK PRICES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19919, 15 August 1927, Page 6

MEAT AND STOCK PRICES

Sir, —I was interested to see the *eport of your interview with a retired butcher, and wondered if you had any difficulty in picking the right retired butcher to go to, as there are so many of them. I was not talking of the profit twenty years ago, but of the profit two months ago, and at the present time. J have seen fat ewes selling at the sales which would weigh 60 to 651bs, dead weight, at 12s to 14s. Now, sir, the skin is worth about ss, to say nothing of the price got for the odds and ends, leaving the actual cost to tho butcher of from 7s to 9s. Yet the cost of ouo leg of this mutton is as near to the Ls as possible.

As to the percentage of bone in meat, I would point out that tho majority of the meat sold is sold with the bone in* and, personally, I pay the same for the bone aS for the meat. Then, again, a small piece of liver or pluck for dog’j meat fetches from 6d to Is, yet a few years ago this was given away. I am quite aware that the butcher has overhead expenses, but surely these are no heavier by comparison with other businesses, and the very fact that same butchers sell for cash so much cheaper than others who will give credit shows that the “credit man’* more than makes up on his extra charge, any loss he might sustain on bad debts. From the farmer’s point of view, be has to keep a cow 12 months before she calves. The calf has to bo grazed 3£ to 4J years before it is fit for beef; you can reckon the cost of this at somewhere near £B. But when he sells the beast for beef, he cannot get more than 2d to 2-Jd a lb, and the butcher gets the hide in as well. I think it would be a very good thing if the farmers clubbed together and started a co-oper-tive butchery of their own. INQUISITIVE. Hunterville, August -3.