Meat Board concerned about unsaleable overfat lamb

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 2, Issue 18, 2 October 1984, Page 7

Meat Board concerned about unsaleable overfat lamb

The New Zealand Meat Board is concerned that farmers have produced 15,000 tonnes of unsaleable overfat lamb this season despite warnings that the world requirement is for leaner meat. The Board has control of sheepmeat marketing and has made the decision to render the lamb meat into tallow and meat and bone meal for export at a large discount because nobody

wants it as an edible product. In announcing its decision to render lamb from this season's kill, the board said that' in spite of extensive efforts to make saies, markets could not be found for all the fatty grades. Rather than incur further storage and interest costs in the slight hope that a sale would turn up, the board had decided to render the lamb down so that stocks

could be reduced to normal levels before the new season. Ideally, New Zealand needs not only leaner lambs, but also bigger lambs according to the board, but this would be difficult to achieve without any overfats and would rrequire not only management but breed changes and selection within breeds and that would take some years. In the meantime, the board hopes that the monetary penalty on overfat lambs would have a marked effect on farmers.