Meeting Change launched

The book has been launched. It took months of research and writing, editing, design and printing and an anxious wait for the finished product to be shipped back from the printers in China, but it is now here.

The launch took place at Te Papa Tongarewa, the Museum of New Zealand on Wednesday 29 June with an audience of current and former Board members and staff of the NZ Meat Board along with interviewees, meat industry personnel and Farmers Council members.

“The book makes for compelling reading and shows the many reasons New Zealanders have to celebrate our red meat sector,” NZ Meat Board and B+LNZ Ltd chair Andrew Morrison told the guests.

“Over the past 25 years, we have arguably seen more change than in the previous 75. No sector in New Zealand has had the productivity gains that the sheep and beef sector has achieved since the 1990s,” he noted, adding it is a book that will be of interest to everyday New Zealanders.

Good feedback has come from Peter Nuthall, Honorary Associate Professor Department of Land Management and Systems, Agribusiness and Commerce Faculty, Lincoln University, who wrote, “The book will become the bible for those wanting information over the period reviewed and while it probably won’t be a best-seller, it will be the ‘go-to’ book for those interested in analysing the past for very many years to come. It will live with pride in the archives of NZ.”

Also, a NZ Farmers Weekly review of the book noted: ““The highest export prices in history are helpful to farmers to commemorate the centenary of the New Zealand Meat Board in 2022. If they need a refresher course on how the meat industry arrived at such lofty heights, Meeting Change: the NZ Red Meat Story 1997-2022, written by Ali Spencer and Mick Calder, will suffice.”
The book can be bought at meetingchange.nz. Note: Hardback copies have nearly sold out, but there are plenty of paperbacks.