Title: The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Otago & Southland Provincial Districts]

Author: Cyclopedia Company Limited

Publication details: The Cyclopedia Company, Limited, 1905, Christchurch

Part of: The Cyclopedia of New Zealand

License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand Licence

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Chapman, Alexander Hamilton , J.P., Farmer, Awakino, Kurow. Mr. Chapman was born in 1852, near Falkirk, Scotland, where he was educated and brought up to country life. He came with his father's family to New Zealand in 1867 by the ship “Silistria,” which landed at Port Chalmers. As a lad of fifteen years he entered the service of the New Zealand and Australian Land Company, and experienced much of the rough pioneering work of the back country in the early days. He continued in the service of the Land Company for eighteen years, and became manager of its Kurow station, at that time one of its best paying properties. He then took up land in the Hakataramea Valley, and resided there for two years, afterwards removing to his present property at Awakino, near Kurow. By means of judicious management, and much hard work, Mr. Chapman now has a valuable mixed grazing and farming property of some 10,000 acres. Mr. Chapman's family consists of two sons, who assist him to work the property, Mr Chapman devotes much of his leisure time to scientific investigation, and in this way has been able to do yeoman service to all the farmers of New Zealand by his discovery of the dry-thawing process for frozen meat, which is so important a trade in this colony. Previous to Mr. Chapman's investigation of the subject, it was held that the moisture which appears so plentifully on the surface of thawing meat came out of the meat itself, page 577 and many remedies had been tried to overcome this defect, and the disfigurement of the meat, and consequent lowering of price which it causes. But all such remedies were failures, because they started from the wrong assumption; namely, that the sweating came from the meat itself. Mr. Chapman's experiments showed him that the so-culled “sweating” of the meat in thawing was really the aqueous vapour of the air being condensed into liquid water by contact with the cold surface of the meat, the meat at the same time absorbing the water till it became soft and flabby; and that, consequently, all that was required to overcome this long standing defect to the frozen meat trade was to place a water proof cover of any kind over or around the meat while thawing, the result being that meat so treated turns out clean and dry and bright looking, and is sold in the British markets as British grown meat. A disappointing result to his research, Mr, Chapman says, but one he is unable to control, the British meat traders doing this for the sake of extra profit. They are, however, enabled to pay the colonial farmer more for his fat stock as a result of this, and much of the increase in value of fat stock during the past three years is due to the meat being sold in England as home-grown and at homegrown prices. Mr. Chapman has tried unsuccessfully to get the meat trading people in Britain using his process, to sell the meat honestly as frozen meat, dry-thawed, but has found them a very conservative class who will go only their own way, Yet though the method of selling as home-grown is a fraud, the New Zealand farmer shares in the benefit by the increased price which he now gets for his meat; a price which could not be obtained were the meat all retailed as frozen meat in the British markets. Mr. Chapman visited London in 1901 fo; the purpose of introducing dry-thawing to the meat traders there, and the process is now widely used throughout the country, with the result stated; namely, that frozen meat is sold extensively in England as home-grown, but the New Zealand farmer gets better prices. As the matter is one of exceptional interest, an accurate description of Mr. Chapman's dry-thawing process will come in very properly in this connection. When Mr. Chapman himself was in London, in August, 1901, he lucidly described it to a reporter of the Financier and Bullionist newspaper, In doing this he said, inter alia: “Meat, being organic tissue, has the property of absorbing moisture—just like a sponge, though not to the same degree. When the cold surface of the meat that has been frozen is exposed to the atmosphere, it condenses and absorbs in the form of moisture the aqueous vapour which atmospheric air contains. The moisture so absorbed tends to spoil the appearance and quality of the meat; it is also injurious to such ‘keeping’ properties as the meat may possess. To prevent the absorption of injurious moisture in the de-frosting of meat has been á serious problem, upon the solving of which great ingenuity and much money have been expended. The principle upon which I have worked has been—not to overcome a natural law by costly and elaborate methods, but to accept the operation of the law, and transfer it from the surface of the meat to another surface. This is accomplished by the very simple expedient of enveloping the frozen carcases in air-tight waterproof coverings before the meat leaves the cold store. The result is that the aqueous vapour of the atmosphere is deposited in the form of moisture—not on the meat, but on the súrface of the waterproof coverings. The surface of the meat, which would otherwise be wet, remains dry, and the quality is so well conserved in consequence, that the mat thus treated commands a better price than meat which has been de-frosted by machinery.”