COLONIAL MEAT IN ENGLAND.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 845, 18 January 1883, Page 2

COLONIAL MEAT IN ENGLAND.

The Western Times , an Exeter paper and an agricultural journal of Righ standing in England, refers thus itcti the high price of beef and mutton at Horae. The Times says that the high price lies on the conscience of the butchery business, Sensitive members of the trade recently met at Dorchester, and agreed that they must charge a shilling a pound for all the best joints of the sheep, and the Times hopes there will not be a mutton famine. The butchers are entitled to a word or two in their defence. There is a great run on the best joints, and a determined rejection of the less fashionable pieces. On the inferior parts of both beeves and mutton butchers lose money, and as our Home supplies fail in quantity, meat must continue to be dearer arid dearer 1 still. As to mutton, we (the Tonies) from a credible source of. flocks being driven into a market town 3 to.,be slaughtered and .sent to London. Jghe agricultural returns for the yeai :sh.oyr a reduction of io,ooo cattle and. 500*800 sheep in the number of those animals as compared with 1880. We need noVisk where’the beet-eater will be at 1 dinner

time if this reduction 'goes on. Our - Importations of foreign meat are up- * wards of 606*000’ tons a year. Mr Gladstone, in the time of agricultural panic,* argued that the rapid increase of population in America would reduce exportation of itneat from that .country. The United,States number s. more. than. 55,000,000 •, inhabitants. hy. They are great, consumers of meat, and our importations from that side of the Atlantic are greatly reduced. Our Australasian colonies could supply all our needs if the trade 'could be made .. to pay. They have nearly as many flocks and .herds as the Americans, with •- only 3,000,000 of people to consume them; while the Americans number 55,000,000. Our total imports of fpr- ; >ig'n meat haVe reached only 660,000 .‘ tons; the Australians could send us .. 700,000 tqns, and increase that quantity very greatly as soon as they got a ‘ paying market. : The question of the meat,supply is full of interest to the •*" farmer and consumer of England. The ? farmer is assured of high prices here■after, so long as our trade continues - prosperous. . ,