BIG PRODUCTION

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 53, 4 March 1922, Page 5

BIG PRODUCTION

BUTTER AND CHEESE ,

SOME AMERICAN CRITICISM.

A rough estimate of Jthe exportable supplies of butter and cheese for the current season is 38,000 tons and 60,000 ■ tons respectively. This estimate is based on the assumption that the weather, which has been highly favourable td the industry, keeps good. There has been plenty of feed, generally speaking, and the autumn prospects are decidedly good, plenty of rough feed being available. The place of honour in the export values of the country's proaKce has been well maintained by butter and cheese. Besides these, there is the pro^ duetion of dried milk, condensed milk/ casein, and sugar of milk to be added' to the wealth derived from the cow. Prices for butter and cheese, it. is true; aTe low, but they are well above prewar levels. Furthermore, the quality of the produce has been fully upheld. Now Zealand butter has not only gone direct into the United States markets via' Vancouver and San Francisco, but via London. The quality of the shipments-has been most favourably commented on by the trade; but it came as a shock to authorities here to learn that the. State of Washington Department of Agriculture should describe out butter as "a commodity unsaleable at any prica elsewhere." This is not teue, official though the statement may be. The price-pre-eminence- of/New Zealand butter, being second only to Danish, is a sufficient answer to that. The State of Washington Department of Agriculture very keenly resented' this "dumping" of foreign butter, stating that "there is no shortage of dairy products in the States." The butter complained .of is Australian, and New Zealand via the Pacific, and Danish and) Irish via the Atlantic.

This adverse view of New Zealand quality is not shared by the Pacific Eeview, which state® : "The fact is that at least 25 per cent, of the butter made in this country in one week after it leaves the chum is not up to the butter from New Zealand and Australia after it arrives in this country. 'How do they do it?' That is thVquestion, we asked; in: these columns several weeks ago. It seems to us it is high" time we sent some of our butter-makers and teachers of but-ter-makers down there to find out. Our leaders in dairy education have laboured under the idea that their education is not complete without a trip to the dairy countries of Europe. They should include New Zealand and Australia, for those countries evidently knqw how."