TAR 
do 
case of good freezing works, the grading for quality is so regular 
that the retailer can usually depend on obtaining what he has 
ordered without having first to examine the goods on the whole- 
saler’s stall, or at a cold store, before he completes the transaction. 
This is tending to reduce the significance of wholesale meat 
markets in the distribution of imported supplies. 
The fact that refrigerated and fresh-killed meat can be so 
sharply differentiated in a number of important respects, may, 
at first sight, lend colour to the view that in a series of studies 
dealing with the marketing of produce sold off farms in England 
and Wales, the present report is an intrusion. The large-scale 
production, processing and distribution which characterise the 
trade in refrigerated meat in the great exporting countries is not, 
however, without lessons applicable, with due adjustment, to 
the smaller farms, the infinitely smaller flocks and herds and the 
mainly individual butchering which mark the home-killed meat 
trade in this country. The price obtained for a steer in the 
country districts of England and Wales is necessarily affected 
by conditions ruling in the distant Argentine; similarly, English 
lamb prices are influenced by conditions in, say, New Zealand. 
Again the methods of distribution pursued by the importing 
firms which have brought ¢ dressed” meat into the very 
heart of the English countryside are bound to react on the 
marketing of home produce. Hence the marketing of home 
produced meat must needs take note of the marketing of imported 
meat, and the present position and structure of this great inter- 
national industry which supplies roughly half the total quantity 
of beef, mutton and lamb consumed in this country, must be of 
interest to all who profit—or suffer—by the cheapness of its 
products. Similarly, as markets become world-wide, knowledge 
confined to one country, or part of a country, is not, of itself, 
a sufficient guide for intelligent production and marketing. 
Information must be co-extensive with the whole producing and 
marketing field. 
It remains to be observed that this Report is intended as a 
descriptive rather than as a critical survey of the machinery 
of distribution at the disposal of imported meat supplies. 
Detailed examination of the costs and profits of the various 
intermediaries engaged, directly or indirectly, in the trade has 
not been attempted, as most of this ground has recently been 
explored by the Royal Commission on Food Prices.* Nor has 
Smithfield Market been described in detail apart from the 
business conducted there, as the circumstances of this important 
market were fully investigated by the Departmental Committee 
on the Wholesale Food Markets of London which reported in 
1921 + 
* Cmd. 2390. 1925. See also Report of Linlithgow Committee on Meat. 
Poultry and Eggs. Cmd. 1927. 1925. 
+ Cmd. 1341. 1925. See also Report of Linlithgow Committee on Meat, 
Poultry and Eggs. Cmd. 1927. 1925.