VALUE IN WAR

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 125, 29 May 1942, Page 3

VALUE IN WAR

DEHYDRATED MEAT

STORY OF EXPERIMENTS

A surprising story concerning experiments with dehydration of imeat and efforts to secure official co-operation in using this process for war purposes was related at the Auckland Farmers' Union conference yesterday.

Captain H. M. Rushworth said the provincial executive of the union began experiments over a year ago. In response to a request from the New Zealand High Commissioner in England it sent samples of the meat specially treated in this manner to the British Ministry of Food. Eventually it received back a report that had been made by a firm, Poulton and Noell, apparently on behalf of the British authorities. The report was that the samples were quite unsuited for consumption, were unpalatable and contained too much bone. ' The most interesting aspect of this was that the samples contained no bone—meat containing bone could not be dehydrated. Moreover, the samples sent to England had been from beasts specially inspected and only the very best parts selected. He and Mr. A. E. Robinson then took similar samples with them to the Near East, travelling for some weeks with their samples in a cardboard box. There the condition and quality of the meat was highly Returning to New Zealand, Captain Rushworth brought back some of his samples —still in a cardboard box—and his wife made some into soup, which was pronounced excellent by members of a conference to whom it was submitted. _ In Singapore a high army officer had been particularly interested in the possibilities of dehydrated meat. He agreed that if they had to engage in a war of movement this would be the only way in which supplies could be kept available. A few weeks later they got that war of movement, and who knows ho much difference this method of keeping up spplies might have made to the men concerned? Still nothing had been done. Long ago they had interviewed the Prime Minister, and the Minister for Maiketing, who said they would continue experiments. They were, apparently, still continuing.