Meat NZ rejects criticism of promotional efforts

Meat New Zealand says is spending $1 million a year more than usual on promoting lamb in Britain, and it spent less than budgeted in 2001 to spare the feelings of British farmers hurt by foot-and-mouth disease.

Britain's Meat and Livestock Commission chairman, Peter Barr, said last week he was worried that New Zealand farmers, who had a third of the British market for lamb, might fail to support generic promotions of lamb in Europe.

Meat NZ "haven't put a penny in it for the past 18 months".

He later said Meat NZ might have spent a few hundred thousand dollars on promotion, but not enough pushing all lamb, not just New Zealand lamb.

But Meat NZ spokesman Matthew Dick said its promotional spending in Britain was $2.8 million or $2.9 million annually from 1999 to 2001.

"The 2001 expenditure was lower than budget in response to recognising the suffering of UK farmers and not wishing to exploit the foot-and-mouth outbreak," he said.

Last year, the board boosted spending to $4.5 million when it re-introduced television advertising of New Zealand lamb after the outbreak. This year it will spend $4 million.



Mr Dick said that unlike the British meat industry, there was no Government contribution to promotion, which was funded by a farmer levy.

The commission spends about £1 million ($2.9 million) a year promoting lamb.

Independent research of advertising in Britain shows consumers have a 79 per cent awareness level of NZ lamb, 35 per cent for British lamb, 29 per cent for English, 12 per cent for Scottish and 27 per cent for Welsh lamb.

The European Union is New Zealand's biggest sheepmeat market at $1.5 billion, but in the past few years more lamb exports have been going to continental Europe instead of Britain.

- NZPA