GRADING OF BACONERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 May 1938, Page 3

GRADING OF BACONERS

DEMAND FOR QUALITY. STANDARDS IN ENGLAND. (By M. J. Scott, 8.A., B.Sc., of the Dept, of Agriculture.) During the last' eight or nine years there has been a persistent demand by producers to have pigs graded. The reasons behind this demand are a desire on the part of those who produce a high quality product to receive some extra reward for it, plus an equally earnest desire to remove inferior types from the market and so to enhance the price received for pig meats. Where pigs have been sold on hooks the same price has been paid whether the pigs were excellent or mediocre, and the only pigs penalised were the rejects, unexportables, and 2nd quality, amounting to 10 per cent or 12 per cent of all pigs slaughtered. The remaining 90 per cent were classed as “good” and paid for at the same average price. When these pigs were exported, however, the English buyer bought them on the basis of 30 to 50 per cent first quality, a similar percentage of second quality, and a smaller percentage of 3rd quality. It was usual to speak of a 40-40-20 outturn, meaning that there was 40 per cent No 1, 40 per cent No. 2, and 20 per cent of No. 3 carcases that could be made into bacon of these grades. The weakness of the old method of marketing pigs lies in the fact that English buyers, not knowing what percentages of ones, twos and threes were in a parcel, bid up to a stated percentage and made deductions for percentages below this. Thus, a line of baconers may have been bought in New Zealand at, say, 6d per lb on the basis of 45 per cent No. 1 primes, with a. deduction of Id per lb for, say, 10 per cent of the line, should there be only 35 per cent of No. I’s in it.

A chain of uncertainty existed from the English buyer to the New Zealand exporter, and from the New Zealand exporter to the New Zealand producer. The English buyer has to make profits, or else he cannot stay in business. So, too, has the New Zealand exporter, and the price paid to the New Zealand producer had to be reduced by the amount of insurance against this uncertainty considered necessary both by the English curer and the New Zealand operator. Grading based on standards acceptable to the English buyer should remove these two risks and improve the prices paid to the New Zealand producer accordingly. '