CHEAP MEAT.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 July 1922, Page 7

CHEAP MEAT.

COING TO GERMANY. Thousands of tons of frozen beef are being imported to Germany and other Continental countries, while many families in this country are starving (says an English paper of May 4). A curious combination of circumstances appear to be contributing to this strange state of affairs. On the one hand the meat retailers in various parts of England decline to sell this frozen beef unless they get the profits they desire, which appear to be excessive. This meat can be, and is being, purchased at from 3d to 4d per lb wholesale—in fact, the . Smithfield prices for last week -were, for New Zealand frozen beef (fores) 27-8 d and (hinds) 4d per lb wholesale. That same meat is being offered for sale in the retail shops up to l lOd per lb. On the other hand, there are two. sections of the working class who are important factors in this remarkable situation. There are the out-of-works, who cannot buy meat at lOd per lb, and there are those who are at work and earning good money who don’t buy it. They prefer meats of a superior quality, and turn up their noses at frozen beef. Furthermore, this class of meat is not welcome at charitable institutions and workhouses. There it will be generally found the inmates are being given fresh meat, even though all through their lives they have hitherto been accustomed to frozen beef. One of the leading importers in Liverpool, from whom the above facts were obtained by a representative of the Evening Express of that city, stated that shiploads of colonial beef were going away from this country every week, due, he declared, to the short-sighted policy of the British meat trade on the retail side. “If the retailers would only reduce the price of meat in their shops, as they might reasonably do, they would be. able to do a much greater trade, and the poor people here would get the benefit. It is nothing short of a scandal that when there is such urgency for us all to economise in. this country that these huge quantities of’cheap meat should lie getting sent away .to the Continent, especially when we have so many poor people hard up and out of work.”