N.Z. Scientist Criticises Dominion Export Cheese

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28872, 17 April 1959, Page 7

N.Z. Scientist Criticises Dominion Export Cheese

(New Zealand Press Association)

NEW PLYMOUTH, April 16 New Zealand cheese sold in Britain still leaves much to be desired, according to the New Zealand scientist, Sir Ernest Marsden. formerly secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.

He has just returned to New Zealand after spending eight months as a guest research worker at the Royal Cancer Hospital. London. Explaining that he was speaking from personal experience and after gleaning the opinions of other British consumers, Sir Ernest Marsden said New Zealand cheese was not mature enough.

“It would be more attractive if it was not so green.” he added. “Canadian cheese is far better” He considers that fundamentally the problem of producing good New Zealand cheese for Britain is related to the period of storage and ripening, plus the use of a proper starter.

New methods using atomic radiation could be employed in breeding good starters, he said, and once starters with the needed characteristics had been found it was possible to design ways of preventing them from deteriorating. Asked about New Zealand butter in Britain, Sir Ernest Marsden said it was good in spite of the fact that some parts of Britain wanted more flavour and some less.

Foreseeing possibilities in Eastern countries, especially among European residents there, Sir Ernest Marsden spoke enthusiastically of a new method by which milk can be frozen in such a way that when thawed it has lost none of its pristine qualities. “That suggests a marketable product, because milk thus frozen is far more acceptable than the tinned variety,” he said. But, when asked if he thought the Dominion could exploit the opportunity, he answered: “The danger in New Zealand is that we do not have enough technical imagination.”

This was allied with his reply to a question about the resources of the New Zealand Dairy Research Institute.

“Improvements in instruments for research workers are advancing at a rapid rate,” he said “but our people have to use equipment three or four years behind the times. It takes them two or three times as long to do a job as it

would if the equipment was up-to-date.”

The system of Government ordering was too slow, and there was little, therefore, to tempt bright young men to stay in the Dominion when they knew they were always going to be working with, out-of-date equipment, and making slow progress accordingly. “That was the reason I had to go away,” Sir Ernest Marsden said, referring to the overseas journey undertaken since his retirement from the department. “I had to have, the use of modern equipment to work on New Zealand scientific problems, otherwise it would have taken too long to do the job.”