COMMONWEALTH PRODUCE

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28906, 28 May 1959, Page 8

COMMONWEALTH PRODUCE

Exotic Exhibition In London (From the London Correspondent of ‘*The Press”! LONDON; May 20. The exhibition hall in John Barker’s department store in Kensington is heavy with the smell of spices and coffee, bright with fruits and canned delicacies from many lands as Britons are reminded yet again of the sources of the. daily fare in Commonwealth countries. The exhibition there of Commonwealth food and drinks has been organised by the Commonwealth Union of Trade. Overlaying this appetising aroma is the scent of 350 Easter lilies fresh from Helds in Bermuda, which is celebrating its 350th anniversary as a colony this year. The stands in the exhibition, which are sponsored by 27 governments, producer organisations and importers, are stocked with wines and fruit from Australia and Africa, a multitude of canned foods from India and Pakistan—prawns, curries and lime pickles —and ingredients for Chinese dish'es—bamboo shoots and bean sprouts—from Hong Kong. Britain, though an exporter of choice preserves, is also an importer of jams and marmalades from South Africa which are on show. In the exotic and colourful setting New Zealand has a hard job to make a hit with something as ’commonplace as butter, attractively wrapped as it may be under a fern leaf label. The Dairy Board has set .up its placid, lifesize publicity Jersey cow In a

green pasture in which she twitch.es her ears and switches her tail mildly while surveying the counter from which butter and cheese samples are distributed. The display has been getting quite as much attention as the more exotic stand opposite promoting groundnut stew with Guinea fowl from Nigeria. Such displays seem to be doing a good though modest job in supplementing the mass advertising thrqugh the press and television.