China rejects butter shipment

Press, 23 September 1980, Page 2

China rejects butter shipment

PA Auckland China has rejected a New Zealand butter shipment worth $7.5 million because it contained too great a micro-biological content. The Dairy Board has confirmed that a 700-tonne shipment was returned because it failed to meet Chinese specifications. A board spokesman, Mr Martin, said yesterday that it was shipped “in error” last April. It had cost the board $400,000 in freight, and a shipment of fresh butter had been substituted.

d “The Chinese have strict specifications for microbiological content of imported butter — some of the strictest in the world — even though they do not meet their own specifications,” Mr Martin said. There was “nothing very much wrong” with the butter and most other markets would have accepted it. “We have not blotted our copybook with the Chinese,” said Mr Martin. However, the Dairy Board decided the butter should be returned to New Zealand instead of going on to another market.

When the butter returned the board instructed the Mid-Northland Dairy Co-Op in Whangarei to “dry fat” it (convert to anhydrous milkfat). However, the story does not end there. The contaminated butter is being blamed for polluting a river. Although the Dairy Board insists that the Mid-Northland Dairy CoOp was the sole converter of the butter, it seems as though the Kaipara Dairy Company at Helensville also processed some. The Auckland Regional Water Board’s August agenda records a com-

plaint of butterfat polluting the Kaipara River last month. “Reject butter returned from China was being melted down . . . and an operator turned a valve the wrong way, resulting in the product discharging to the waste water drain below floor level,” the agenda read. The secretary of the Kaipara company (Mr R. Moyle) said yesterday that the dairy company had converted butter received from Whangarei, but he thought the company’s manager might have given an incorrect explanation as to its origin.