THE AUCTIONING OF MEAT.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2321, 26 May 1887, Page 3

THE AUCTIONING OF MEAT.

# TO THE EDITOR. Sin, —I have read with great dissatisfaction that a few of the farmers in the neighbourhood of Hamilton contemplate establishing weekly sales of meat by auction. This means a direct cut at our vested interest, and at the rather mild profit (some two or three hundred per cent.) which we have hitherto enjoyed. It is a well-known fact that good sheep that will cut from sixty to sixty-five pounds of mutton cannot be had at the Ohaupo saleyards under six shillings and sixpence to seven shillings per head, which, after deducting three shillings for skin and rough fat, leaves the cost to the butcher at tho exorbitant figure of four shillings ! Yet, in the face of this, people object to pay fouvpence and fivepence per pound for their inutlon. Furthermore, "Family Man," in your issue of this morning, has had the temerity to suggest sales of beef also; but this, I think it will be admitted by all, there is no necessity for. seeing that the prices for fat cattle, as per Buckland and Co.'s report in' your Tuesday's issue, range from £2 10s for fat cows to £4 7s for fat steers, yielding on an average Gcwt. dressed meat! From this amount, however, must be deducted the sum of ±!1 or thereabouts for the hide, tongue, and other offal, so that in reality we are paying on an average at the high rate of ten shillings per lOOlbs. for our beef, and yet people growl at paying us fourpence and fivepence per pound for it ! The beef retailed by us is generally of the very finest quality, being cut from the carcases of cows that have been celebrated for their milking qualities for the last ten or a dozen years, and some even so long back as the foundation of the settlement, so that the quality of the beef is beyond question ! And yet this is not all. If the new system of selling meat by auction is persisted in, meat, instead of being, as those in our trade have endeavoured to make it, a luxury for the well-to-do classes, is likely to sink to the level of a common toorl for the common people. The increased consumption is likely to harden the price of cattle and sheep, and in the end the trade will have to pay a higher price to the bloated farmer (who, by the way, only requires a little more bloating of the kind he has been enjoying recently to bust him) for our supplies.—l am, yours in tears, Butcheh Bot. Hamilton, May 24th.