BACON GRADING

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20504, 21 May 1938, Page 26 (Supplement)

BACON GRADING

SYSTEM JUSTIFIED SHOULD IMPROVE PRICES (By M. J. Scott, Pig Superintendent.) During the last eight or nine years there has been a persistent demand by producers to have pigs graded. The reasons be hi ml 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 second 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 j 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 third quality. | It was usual to speak of a 40-40-20 out-turn, meaning that there were io per cent No. 1, 40 per cent No. 2, and 20 per cent of No. 3 carcases thiit could be made into bacon of these grades. Weakness of Old Method. 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. l’s jin it. A chain of uncertainty existed €rom the English buyer to the New Zealand exporter, and from the New Zealand exporter to the New Zealand produce] - . 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 cure* 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. I