URGENT AND IMPORTANT

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 125, 29 May 1930, Page 8

URGENT AND IMPORTANT

One of the first and most urgent matters requiring attention of the new Minister of Agriculture (Mr. A. J. Murdoch) 'is the quality of New Zealand cheese. We are perfectly well aware of the fatuity of "crying stinking fish," but complaints of the quality of one of the star exportsof the Dominion are coming in thick and fast from within the Dominion, and, what is more serious, from the Great British market itself—a market worth over STt ,000,000 per annum, and capable of greater expansion. Matters have now become so pressing, that South Island cheesemakers are agitating for the specific branding of their produce "South Island Manufacture," for the reason that their graded quality is consistently higher than that of the North, but as all cheese goes into the British market as "New Zealand Cheese," the average return is lowered by the indifferent quality of the bulk manufactured in the North Island. In the

so-called "standardised" cheese, fat content is reduced to a standard percentage, and the manufacturer (who is the farmer himself) retains the butter-fat over and above that percentage. But it is not only this skimming-off of a certain amount of cream that may be lowering the o;rade from the acme of "finest" to "first" in the North Island that is causing difficulty. There are certain defects in manufacture which develop by the time the produce arrives in its oversea market. The Dairy Division, by instruction, advice, and backed by certain legislation, is perfectly well aware of the seriousness of this cheese quality question. Yet the trouble continues. One question Mr. Murdoch must ask. and receive a satisfactory answer, if the great cheese export trade is to flourish, and it will be: Can regulations be made sufficiently strict so as to save a large majority of cheese-makers from themselves, and, incidentally, retain and extend one of the most potent sources of the wealth of the Dominion?