CREAM SUPPLIES TO BUTTER FACTORIES

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22429, 16 June 1938, Page 9

CREAM SUPPLIES TO BUTTER FACTORIES

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRESS. Sir, —About a year ago a petition was presented before the Agricultural Commission from the suppliers of Sefton Dairy Company, asking that the factory should not be closed down. At the same time I wrote a letter saying that we were afraid the cream would suffer in the grading, if sent to town. I received an answer from Mr Justice Frazer saying that he saw no reason why the cream should not grade the same. The Sefton factory was closed down and everything has come out as we expected. Earlier in the season, in the height of summer, the cream was being collected in the morning, put on the train in the afternoon, and not dealt with till 7.30 next

morning at the factory. This meant that the cream was left with the lids on the cans closed for from 19 to 24 hours. How was it possible for cream to be fresh after that? Now, the same thing is being carried on; except that the cream is being collected only once a week. Formerly, when sending to Sefton the cream was dealt with within three hours of leaving the farm. This week, owing to the holiday, it will be eight days before the cream is collected, making nine days before it is dealt with at the factory, after standing all night with the lids on the cans. 1 say they have no right to grade the cream under such conditions; and this is the first time it has been done. I understand that in closing the smaller factories, the idea was to give more efficient service and to produce better butter. Under the present system this is impossible. I hope some other farmers will take up this matter and secure better methods for the handling of cream, which the farmer has a right to expect. The farce of the whole thing is that we are only 27 miles distant from Christchurch.—Yours, etc., J. PAGE. Leithfield, June 9, 1938. [When this letter was referred to Messrs C. P. Agar (manager of the Tai Tapu Dairy Company) and S. J. Smith (general manager of the Canterbury Central Co-operative Dairy Company) they said that the service being given to suppliers at present was the same as that operated during the winter months since the practice of home separation was introduced. Some suppliers experienced, even in the winter, grading troubles; on the other hand, the general body of suppliers experienced little, if any, grading difficulties. “Our experience leads us to believe that the cause of grading troubles is usually not with the collection, but other reasons. Over the whole of the supply received throughout the North Canterbury territory, second grade cream is less than 2 per cent, of the total supply handled.”]