RABBIT ALMOST LUXURY AS FOOD IN BAY OF PLENTY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 33, 2 September 1949, Page 8

RABBIT ALMOST LUXURY AS FOOD IN BAY OF PLENTY

Although New Zealand has more live rabbits than it wants it is a fact that as a food rabbit is almost a luxury. Even in the Bay of Plenty, especially at Manawahe, where rabbits abound in their thousands it is difficult to obtain rabbit to eat unless one goes out after them, They are by no means prolific in retail shops and a tasty rabbit din- ' ner has now become something of an event. The present shortage of rabbits for local consumption seem? to arise

from two facts —that activities are concentrated on the export side, and that retail prices permitted do not allow the retailer any margin. It is said that rabbits cost the retailers a little over 9d a lb to land in his ’’-'shop, while the fixed retail price is

7Ad Control By Private Packers The export of rabbits is in the hands of a number of private packers, three of whom handle the bulk of them on a trader-to-trader basis with markets in Britain,

' High costs of trapping (traps are three times as dear as they were prewar) and the 20 per cent, levy on skins has combined to discourage trappers, though a' season or so ago, 'when skins were dear, trappers in the South Island especially were banking fabulous cheques. It has been • suggested that the local retail price of rabbits is deliberately kept low in order to encourage their export as part of the programme for helping Britain. The point is well made, however, that if more rabbits were available to the local consumers there should be

a reduction in the demand for other meats, which in turn would be

available for export, In the meantime the rabbit continues to upset a lot of people—the housewife, who finds it hard to buy one; the retailer, who can’t sell them at a profit; the trapper, who doesn’t see enough money in it; and lastly the farmer, who reckons the little so-and-so is costing the country anywhere from £B,OO >,OOO to £9,000,000 a year in loss of pasture and other feed.

5,000,000 Carcases Exported From New Zealand about 5,000,000' carcases have been exported annually to Britain during the past few years. They have gone in cans. How much of the £926,000 that canned meats yielded in 1948 represented rabbits is speculative, but it must have been substantial. On top of that, there was revenue from rabbit skins—a little item worth some £755.000 to this country last year. Whether as a fur coat, a felt hat, or a hot dinner, the rabbit has a substantial practical value as an item of trade —and it is not often that a profit can be made out of a pest.