THE FROZEN MEAT TRADE.

Feilding Star, Volume III, Issue 55, 27 December 1882, Page 3

THE FROZEN MEAT TRADE.

«. The Wellington Post's London correspondent writes as follows by the last mail : — In my remarks about frozen me?kt last month, I omitted to mention a rather hnppy idea which has been evolved by some consignees of colonial produce for keeping up the price of their goods in the Home market. Instead of sending the whole consignment to Smithfield, and -spoiling the trade by flooding the place with thousands of carcases in a single day, these wise men have purchased an old hulk, and fitted it up with freezing apparatus. When the steamer arrives she gops alongside the hulk and transfers the frozen meat to the hold, from whence ike carcases cm be sent to Smitlifield in tens, hundreds, or thousands, as required. The result is that fairly uniform prices <»an be had. The persons most likely to suffer by the success of frozen produce are the manufacturers and importers of tinned meats. I was speaking the other ■day to a grocer, who does an immense business across the river, where he possesses about half-a-dozen shops, mostly in poor localities. He told me that recently the objection to tinned meat among the working classes had been to a great extent overcome, and he was just beginning to sell larger quantities of the cheaper kinds when purveyors opened temporary shops for the sale of American beef and Australian mutton, and now they seem likely to carry everything their own way. As yet, of course, tbe movement has not grown sufficiently to materially affect any business, but when the frozen meat Incomes cheap and easily procured 1 fully expect that more than one kind of retail tradesmen will find a difference. The arrival of a large conftignment of frozen salmon from America has raised the question cf utilising the fjjpiinjr chambers of ships and steamers truich bring meat here from Australia by filling them with fish and game for tbt colonies. The chief objection hithertc Las been that fish did not keep well, bul skippers declare they can now dehvei salmon frozen for any length of time a; fresh as when shipped. If so, the colo nies ' hare a rare treat in prospect Schnapper you have, and mullet, likewis* flounders, but who would prefer these t( the succulent sole, the royal turbot, th< noble cod, or e?en the homely bloater i