FROZEN BEEF

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 152, 24 December 1929, Page 12

FROZEN BEEF

ITS TRADE HANDICAP QUALITY NOT AT FAULT (From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 18th November. In one of his Empire Free Trade articles, Lord Beaverbrook suggested that beef cannot be transported successfully lin a frozen condition. The matter has been taken up by the Australian High Commissioner's Department. In a letter to the "Daily Express," the Official Secretary saya:— ' "While admitting that frozen beef does labour under a considerable handicap in that it is not ready for immediate use, and therefore is unpopular with small traders, it possesses this great advantage, that it can he transported to any part of the country and stored at will. "The demand for beef for immediate consumption results in a margin of price in favour of chilled beef. This margin, is greater than is warranted by the quality. The beef market is ruled by the supply of chilled; but frozen beef, far from being a neglected com-, niodity, is sold in considerable quantities, and during the last three weeks over a thousand tons of Australian frozen beef have been sold at SmitKfield. It is generally admitted that the standard of quality of Australian frozen beef is now so high that any further improvement can be effected only by the importation of considerable' numbers of stud stock from this country. . "The Empire Marketing Board and the Governments concerned have exercised their willingness to assist in the importation of pedigree stock from Great Britain, and there is good reason for traders to expect that Australia will be their best customer for stock, as she is for so many other things. But it is evident that* the continued purchase of British* pedigree stock by Australian pastoralists will be dependent on the adequacy of the demand for Australian frozen beef. "Australia does not seek to compete ■with the home producer, but is justifiably anxious to obtain a fair share of the import trade necessary to supplement supplies of beef vital to the industrial welfare of Great Britain." Speaking at a dinner given by the Central Markets Committee of the Corporation of the City of London, Sir Granville Byrie (High Commissioner for Australia) also referred to tho subject. "It is exactly fifty years next month," he said, "since the first shipment was made of Australian beef to London. We have been shipping it successfully ever since, and the quality we are now sending is better than ever it was. True, it is frozen, and for that reason is not so popular among some traders as the chilled from the Argentine. But freezing has as little effect on beef as chilling, a fact confirmed by a recent food investigation report of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and when cooked not one person in. a thousand could.tell the difference.". Sea water is taken specially from the Bay of Biscay for use in the aquarium at the London Zoo, because it is so very clear.