WINTER BEEF 35 



all cases the concentrated food must be ample. Animals, with 

 a certain age on them, fed in this way for some 20 weeks, 

 produce the very best joints that come to the block between 

 December and May (both months included). No other country 

 in the world produces this meat in any quantity. It is doubtful, 

 indeed, whether any country produces such perfection as regards 

 appearance, delicacy of texture, and flavour. In England such 

 beef, whenever possible, is called " Norfolk," no matter in what 

 county it may have been finished ; in other parts of the kingdom 

 it is called "Scotch." The name depends on the side of the 

 border which had the opportunity of housing the bullock, but 

 both titles are a mark of distinction. The superiority of this beef 

 was such that it would always fetch a decent price, even before 

 the war when prices of ordinary food were low low enough, 

 indeed, to lead to the waste which threatened our security as a 

 nation long after the war began. It was, in fact, a luxury of 

 which the supply might have been marketed at monopoly figures, 

 if the winter feeders had taken pains to regulate the demand, for 

 it had no overseas competitors. But the winter feeders despised 

 co-operation and our co-operative societies were, it is to be 

 feared, too much concerned in saving the commission of half-a- 

 crown on buying a ton of cake, to give any real attention to the 

 marketing of millions of pounds' worth of cattle. The whole 

 industry suffered from lack of business-like co-ordination of 

 interests from the calf dropped in the west or north country 

 auction shed full of magnificent deep-milking cows to the long 

 lines of splendid, fat, three-year-old bullocks standing in the East 

 Anglian sale-yard. Some form of co-operation is a prominent 

 feature in the agriculture of our Continental neighbours, whose 

 husbandry is a vital part of their national life instead of being 

 generally regarded, as was ours, as an industry unworthy of a 

 good Britisher's enterprise. In the fat cattle trade there was one 

 great exception to this lack of business-like co-operation, not, 

 however, among the farmers, but among the Scots dealers ! The 

 business men of the North-East of Scotland had, before the 

 war, a very fine trading net- work for distributing their cattle 

 systematically to those markets where they were most likely to 

 sell profitably, 



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