Frozen Pigs for England.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 246, 25 October 1901, Page 3

Frozen Pigs for England.

COLONIAL BACON lIOMF CUBED AFTER IM TO RTAT lON. (London Mail.) Frozen pigs are arriving in England today from New Zealand, to be " home cured ’’ for the British breakfast table. The explanation is that the world is short of pigs, and as people still insist on eating pork, the shippers and eurers are straining every nerve to reach the remotest parts where pig is sold. This is why England is buying bacon from Siberia, Russia, Denmark, Holland, Canada, the United States, Australia, and a score more of our Colonial friends and

foreign rivals. Hitherto this foreign bacon has always arrived in England already cured, and since it is " mildly cured " to suit the British palate, a very large portion cf the baeou sold to the householder is slightly tainted.

To prevent this, numerous attempts have been made to put the dead pig into ice and turn him into bacon on arrival in England. But-he lowering of the temperature below 82deg. Fahrenheit has invariably faded the flesh into a pale, unpleasant color, and alienated the affec- j lions of the British matron. Now, however, by what may be called a triumph of transit and cure, a most promising and important trade has begun between New Zealand and England. By employing the Yecht curing process, a New Zealand firm is shipping pigs from that distant colony, placing them in refrigerators with a temperature of SOdeg. , Fahrenheit, and curing them here on the I banks of the Thames with apparently ; perfect success. | This success is obtained by firs: treating the carcases, before they leave New Zealand, by the Yecht curing process, which allays the action of the cold, and so sterilises the tlesh as to prevent the change which has hitherto interfered with the successful curing at home of what is grown abroad. Messrs Traverse and Co., who are colonial shippers on a large scale and the British agents of Armonrs. of Chicago, are encouraging this new process, and prophesy for it a vast influence on the bacon trade.