European ‘Identity’ Surprises

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32358, 25 July 1970, Page 14

European ‘Identity’ Surprises

Surprise over the degree of supra-national feeling and thinking that existed in Europe was expressed yesterday by Mr R. W. Cawley, a director of the Wheat Research Institute, who recently returned to Christchurch from a visit to Europe, North America and Australia.

Mr Cawley found a great deal of work going on in the baking industry in countries of the European Economic Community, in preparation for the eventual unification of food laws. Even the definition of bread presented a real problem, he said. In some countries, for instance, fat was a normal ingredient of bread, but in others a product that had fat in it was not looked on as bread, but rather as a special bread.

If so much work was going on in the bread-baking industry then a great deal must be in progress over the whole food industry, in the interests of common food laws and the furthering of trade among member countries.

Nowhere, however, Mr Cawley said, did he find any complaint about the amount of work. The extension of European unity was something that seemed to be accepted. He bad been surprised to hear a German say: “You must visit Amsterdam—it is our finest city.” This was but an indication of a degree of supra-national thinking that quite surprised him. While in Europe, Mr Cawley said, he had noticed a new interest in the breadbaking quality of homegrown wheats. This bad not existed in the past, when they had been using North American wheat to strengthen the quality of their own supplies, but, with the trend now towards self-sufficiency within the E.E.C., they were becoming more aware of the importance of quality.

World Congress

During his trip Mr Cawley attended the fifth World Cereal and Bread Congress in Dresden in East Germany, which, he said, was the first large international meeting of this type held in East Germany. It was attended by more than 2000 delegates, from more than 40 countries. The East Germans, he said,

had really put themselves out for the occasion, and the arrangements for the accommodation of delegates, the

meetings and simultaneous translation into English, French, Russian and German, had been excellent. While in the Soviet Union Mr Cawley visited the All Union Institute for Grain and Cereal Products, which has a staff of about 600. He said that it had an experimental mill which produced six tons of flour an hour. It was bigger than many commercial flour mills in New Zealand. He also visited the Central Research Institute of the Baking Industry, which is concerned with bakery technology, and the Moscow Technological Institute of the Food Industry, which is a university for the training of food technologists. Visit To Bakery

While in Moscow he visited one of the famous circular

bakeries which were built in the 19305. These consist of a series of production lines arranged in concentric circles in a circular multi-storey building. In the one that Mr Cawley saw there were four such production lines.

The technique, he said, resulted in a high capacity in a relatively small space. Many of the tasks in the bakery, he said, were carried out by women. It was, of course, well known that Russian women did many jobs that would be regarded as the prerogative of men in this country, including work on the roads, sweeping streets, and driving buses. Mr Cawley said he bad not seen a lot of white bread in Russia, but what he had seen had been good. There was a good deal of bread made from rye, and rye and wheat mixtures, and it was quite palatable. Baking Differences

While finding the opportunity to travel outside New Zealand very useful, not only in gathering information but also in gaining perspective, Mr Cawley said that in each country he visited bread was made by different processes to meet the different tastes of the particular regions. He said he felt that, in the final analysis, the same thing would have to be done in New Zealand.

Mr Cawley also visited the Bread Research Institute in Sydney, laboratories in Northern Europe, research organisations near London, including the Flour Milling and Bread Baking Research Association’s laboratories at Chorley Wood and St Albans, and laboratories at Winnipeg in Canada and at Fargo and San Francisco in the United States.