FAT LAMB TRADE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 March 1939, Page 3

FAT LAMB TRADE

DOMINION’S SUPREMACY. CHALLENGE BY ARGENTINA. The supremacy of New Zealand lamb in the British market—a supremacy which Argentine breeders hope eventually to challenge —may be gathered from the fact that although New Zealand’s stock, in number of head, is only half that of Argentina, we supply three times as many lambs to the British market as does Argentina. It is unlikely, however, that Argentina fat lamb producers will meekly submit to this situation, and already the Argentine Rural • Society has organised “block tests” with the object of educating the farmers as to the best type of lamb for the British market, and to give them an opportunity of studying the most suitable crosses to attain to that end.

It is an admitted fact that the object of these block tests, five of which have now been organised, is to encourage the Argentine breeder so to improve his flocks as to enable him to increase considerably the production of fat lambs of a quality which will put him on equal terms, on Smithfield, with the best grades of New Zealand lamb, which they regard as the hall mark of perfection. Of 29,628 tons of Argentine mutton an dlamb exported during the first seven months of 1938, 26,621 went to Great Britain, 2111 to France, 150 to Belgium, and the remainder to a number of other countries. During this period the United Kingdom imported 11,372,536 carcases of lamb. Of these Argentina supplied only 2,527,477, while . New Zealand provided 7,051,926 carcases, the rest being from Australia: