“ANGLO-AUSTRALIAN” ON THE MEAT TRADE.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1137, 11 January 1884, Page 2

“ANGLO-AUSTRALIAN” ON THE MEAT TRADE.

“ Anglo-Australian ” in the European Mail of November 16 writes:—The everlasting question—it is quite an insoluble problem to some'of the middle classes in these days, with fixed incomes and rising expenditure—of butcher’s meat is again exercising the public mind here. The subject lias been often threshed out by me ; but, verily,: there is yet something new to say thereon, for —mirabile dictu —wo have now a proposition before ns for supplying cheap meat for the million, not from Australia, or even America, but from Russia, of all countries I In South Russia, so it is alleged, good beef fetches but 3d per pound, and from Odessa this wondrous Muscovite beef is to be imported to London. The whole thing has been calculated and properly worked out—on paper—and Russian beef is to be vended in England at 8d the pound, and leave a magnificent profit for the promoters. Of course, the whole scheme is absurd, but in these days a speculation of this sort is but too likely to find dupes. I think, however, that such attempts as these to make capital out of the thorough confusion into which the British paterfamilias has been long since reduced by his familiar tyrant the butcher* should do much to stimulate colonial stockbreeders to fill the gaps—and how numerous they arc—that seem specially created for them, I was glad to learn that at Dunedin a strong movement has been initiated for establishing frozen meat factories, with a view to export as much as a million carcases of sheep per annum. The Russian scheme is all ■ rubbish, but even this keeps the subject of imported fresh meat alive, and all that colonial pastoralists need to do is to organise on such a broad and solid basis as shall deprive their supplies ofjpj that fitful, uncertain character which has done more than anything else, I believe, to hinder the full development of what is destined to be one of the greatest of colonial industries before the century is , very much older.