MORE ABOUT MEAT.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3260, 13 December 1881, Page 4

MORE ABOUT MEAT.

The Orient's cargo has been disposed of at good but moderate prices, and the success of the venture is assured. But there is still much complaint of the difficulty experienced in buying the meat. Except for those who were at the auction, this is nearly impossible. The wholesale men got possession of the carcasses, and as soon as they were distributed in the retail trade they were sold at the ordinary rates, and all traces of their origin as Australian disappeared. If it was recognised at all it was only to depreciate it. The chief complaint against the meat— the beef in particular—is the darkness of the flesh. In this country we eat our beef ■when it is about three years old, and the color of the meat is a rich red. Anything darker is looked on with suspicion. Horseflesh is dark, say those who will not understand that the flesh of the horse, specially fattened for food, and not the refuse of omnibus and cab traffic, is the most nutricious of all animal foods. But the mere hint of horseflesh is sufficient to damage the character of the sirlion of the juiciest steak. Another unfair charge made against the Australian meat is , that it is coarso and underbred, a manifest error to all Australians, who have reason to be proud of their efforts to secure the best stock-blood from the old country. Nothing perhaps will tend more to convince the sceptical than the honest championship of the chief cook of the Orient, who, in a well-expressed, sensible letter to the Times, has set forth all the facts and exposed all the prevalent fallacies about the meat. He has pructically thrown down the gage, and offers to place on dinner tables dishes of Australian meat side by side with that of any other country, and confidently challenges connoisseurs to distinguish which is which. —Homo Ifews.