BACON AND PORK

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 330, 16 April 1928, Page 10

BACON AND PORK

DEVELOPING THE INDUSTRY STATE RESEARCH SCHEME (Special to THE SI X) WELLINGTON, Saturday. “The Government views the development of the bacon and pork industry as one of great potential value to the Dominion.” j THUS, the Prime Minister, the Kt. -*■ Hon. J. G. Coates, to-day, when announcing' the details of a comprehensive programme of research to be applied immediately to the pig industry. Pour main sections were to be embraced by the programme—experimental feeding, pig recording, quality of carcase tests, and investigations of the pork and bacon-curing process. The feeding investigations would be conducted on strictly scientific experimental lines at Otago University, Lincoln College and Massey Agricultural College. Diets, management and breeding experiments would be devised, and these should throw a good deal of light upon what rations were the most economical and productive of the best results so far as the quality of the meat was concerned. Farmers, therefore, would receive sound advice based on actual trials, carefully recorded and examined, which would give them guidance to replace the present haphazard and wasteful practice of throwing to pigs just whatever they would eat. At the same time the full feeding value of the various industrial by-products would be realised.

Three pig-recording groups would be established in the districts displaying certain marked types of farming. It was proposed that one group officer would work in the Waikato, in a district where abundance of skim milk would be available for pig feed, another in the Manawatu, in a whey district, and associated with Massey College, and the third in Canterbury, a grain district and associated with Lincoln College. In each district a recording officer equipped with the necessary weighing and transport facilities would proceed from farm to farm weighing and keeping a record of pigs at regular intervals. Visits would be paid to farms as in the case of herd, testing, thus a valuable mass of detailed information regarding the prolificacy of sows, the value of certain types and strains of pigs, and the influence of feeding and management, would be secured. Each officer would be able to deal with about 2,000 pigs at ond period. As herd-test-ing had been of such signal service to the dairy industry, so it was confidently hoped that pig recording in a similar manner would promote the well-being of tke pig industry. Watching Overseas Requirements Quality of carcase tests were being arranged in co-operation with local pork and bacon curers, through the Meat Board. Details of the pigs that had been passed through the pig recording officer’s hands would continue to be kept at the slaughtering works, and in the grading process. Those shipped oversea would be reported upon by Smithfield experts, in order than a standard of comparison with what was required in the English markets would be ascertained, thus a complete history sheet of the J- 10 / 11 producer to the market would be available for both business and scientific purposes, and the closest possible touch maintained with tne oversea consuming trade. Investigations already were tentatively in process to assist bacon curers in a number of problems affecting their local trade. * , . “Although provision has ueen made for immediate assistance to the mdustrv,” said Mr. Coates, “by means of a subsidy of <£ 30,000, which will ensure reductions in freight and thus enable the producers to place their pork and bacon on oversea markets at a lessened cost, the Government is determined to leave no stone Unturned in order that the industry locally may bo put on a sound basis.