Check For Smuggled New Zealand Butter

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31769, 28 August 1968, Page 28

Check For Smuggled New Zealand Butter

GN ZP A. Staff Correspondent) SYDNEY, August 27. Airline and customs officials at Sydney airport are keeping a special watch for smuggled New Zealand butter as a result of a report that it was being sold by a suburban delicatessen in Sydney.

Passengers and aircraft crew arriving in Sydney from New Zealand are being asked whether they are carrying any butter and some luggage is being closely searched. Supplies of butter in the shop were said to be irregular but frequent and it appeared that the shop was being supplied by a regular trans-Tasman passenger. A customer who asked about New Zealand butter at the shop this week was told: “We get it sometimes but we do not have any now. Supplies are restricted. We had 10 pounds recently and that was all we could get.” Customs officials have in the past traditionally allowed passengers to bring in up to 101 b of butter from New Zealand, as gifts for friends. They confiscated anything above that amount, claiming it was a “commercial quantity.” New Zealand butter is not sold in Australia, and imare subject to strict regulations. The' smuggling report was received a few days after a large-scale trade in fake New

Zealand butter was revealed in Queensland.Racketeers were said to be selling unlabelled packs of Australian-made cooking margarine to housewives, shops, and restaurants, claiming that it was New Zealand butter.