The Frozen Mutton Trade

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 41, 22 September 1892, Page 4

The Frozen Mutton Trade

♦ Until special retail depots for the sale of New Zealand mutton and lamb are established all over the place there is nov, I fear, any cure for the state of thin»s described in the following letter to Saturday's 'Chronicle.' The facts are no secret. Bar the •* wrinkle " concerning the caul and foot trick, you have known for years that the bulk of the New Zealand mutton was retailed as prime Scotch. In 1885 I began to write about it. It is now 1892 ! The ' Chronicle ' says :— " A correspondent connected with the wholesale meat market has written us a letter, deseryintj wide attention, on the extravagant charges of butchers. Fat lambs, lie says, for the past two months have been selling in Smithfield Market at from 6d to 7£d per lb by the carcass, this low price for ' country lambs' arising from the supply exceeding the demand. In sympathy with the depressed trade for home-grown lamb, New Zealand (Canterbary) mutton has been selling at 3jd to 4d per lb, wholesale price. Our correspondent quotes the following figures from one of our own Market reports : — New Zealand Mutton, per stone of Blb, 2s 5d to 2s 8d ; English lamb, 4s 4d to ss; New Zealand lamb, 3s 8d to 3s lOd. These are low prices, but the public does not get the full benefit of the considerable reduction in the price of meat. The butcher, according to our well-informed correspondent, is a perfect cormoraDt. Butchers have been and now are buying lamb at 6d to 7\d per lb, and they have been charging for it Ild to ls per lb, and show no sign of lowering the prices. Even these exorbitant profits do not content them, so they resort to the | trick of selling foreign lamb as English. Our correspondent, like some other informants, describes this operation as involving an artifice •which the public should be made aware of. New Zealand lambs are imported and sold to West End butchers and others, without caul or feet, say at 5d per lb. They are sent out with the addition of a caul, and with a big* foot attached to each joint, and the price charged is lld per lb. Tbe same clever conjurers, who must needs be paid lor their legerdemain, buy Kew Zealand sheep at the low prices quoted, and sell them as Scotch, at the top price of the Market. When asked ■■ How came this Scotch mutton to be frozen V the reply is ' We are obliged keep it in a refrigerator during this hot weather,' This is the way they coin money at the West End." London correspondent, Dunedin Star