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from one shipment, but so far as we have seen, the merit appears to be in the
immunity from prejudicial change after leaving the refrigerator, thus differing
entirely from ordinary refrigerated beef, which, in this humid climate,
deteriorates with great rapidity. Further shipments will show whether
there is any real advantage in this system.
(f).—Importers of frozen meat from New Zealand and Australia have also
had very keen competition from the various companies bringing frozen
meat from Argentina. There has been an increased supply of sheep from
Australia. Most of the carcases have been good useful mutton, but a great
many were fat and wasteful, while some of the lambs and young sheep were
very imperfectly made up, and thawed out wet, so that it would be easy to
mistake them for dropsical ones. There has also been an abundant supply
of sheep and lambs from New Zealand, but although these still retain their
superiority to any other frozen produce, they are not as good as formerly.
No doubt they have to be sought for further afield, but whatever the reason
may be, we miss the symmetry and fullness of flesh of the old Canterbury,
for which the North Island and others, which have been sent to make good
the deficiency, are inadequate substitutes. Meanwhile the breeders in
Argentina are finding some results from the use of the splendid rams they
have purchased in Shropshire and elsewhere in this country, and have been
sending us a class of mutton which is improving year by year, and bids fair
in a short time seriously to challenge the claim of New Zealand to the premier
position. Of frozen beef, New Zealand and Australia have both sent us
considerably more than previous years, having in that way contributed to
make good the shortage of American live cattle. The New Zealand beef has
been good, and they appear now to have learned the lesson of careful
preparation for slaughter, as there has been very little loss from "bone taint."
The quantity of frozen Argentine beef has been about on a level with
previous years.
It may here be remarked that this branch of the trade is getting very
largely into the hands of the Americans and a few others, whose arrangements
for distributing meat of this kind are widespread in character; hence the
business is done more largely than ever from dock stores and other depots of
a similar description, ignoring Smithfield even for many of the larger London
buyers, thus emphasising the necessity for a closer and more rigorous
inspection of those stores containing as they do almost unlimited means
of concealing anything which the proprietors may wish to screen from
observation; they are for the most part in the hands of people who would
not lend themselves to any improper proceeding of this kind, but that does
not in any measure relieve a public body of its duty to keep them under
observation. The other food imported in a frozen state consists of American
pigs, pork loins and cuttings, boned quarters of beef, sheeps' and pigs' plucks,
kidneys, and the bye-products of slaughtering, as to which there is nothing to
add to the comments of last year. Their method of sending boneless chucks