BY THEIR SENSES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 156, 3 July 1936, Page 5

BY THEIR SENSES.

AUCKLAND'S TESTERS. GRADING DAIRY PRODUCE. HUGE TONNAGE EACH YEAR. There are eight men at least in Auckland who earn their livelihood entirely by their sense of colour, taste and smell. They are the city's dairy produce testers, and each year they grade and classify in the region of 115,000 tons of butter and cheese for the export market. They are employees of the Department of Agriculture—men who have been trained in every aspect of dairy produce manufacture—and on their work depends to a great extent the high standard of the Dominion's export. At present these men are engaged in the judging of the entries for the dairy produce section of the Auckland Winter Exhibition, which will be opened next week. In this work they are using exactly the same methods that they would employ in their ordinary duties, but, in all but one class, their task in judging is a more difficult one in that they must select the best of entries that have been specially churned for show purposes. In the one class referred to the entries were selected at random from the export supplies of the companies that entered. Interesting Methods. The testers, working under the supervision of Mr. E. C. Wood, chief Government grader in Auckland, are conducting the judging at the grading store on King's wharf, and their methods are interesting to watch. With a long, dagger-like scoop they take a sample of the butter from the centre of the case presented, and then apply the tests of texture, colour and flavour. In the perfect butter the colour must be evenly yellow, and there must be no graining or spotting. The taste is the taste of the connoisseur. Naturally the butter is not swallowed by the tasters—that

would' be too much to ask even of a man who has been testing butter all his life. In this day all dairy produce exported from New Zealand is graded for quality and classified; the flavour of the butter by the senses of taste and smell, and cheese largely by the sense of smell. Each case of butter and each crate of cheese is branded with the name of the «uni>lving lirm. with the number of the churning and the day on which it was cminieu. It is reckoned that 100,000 tons of butter (equalling about 4,000,000 boxes) and 15,000 tons of cheese pass through the stores each year, and as there are about 40 boxes to each churning, the graders have to face a fairly arduous task each year.