DAIRY RESEARCH.

Franklin Times, Volume 14, Issue 200, 9 November 1925, Page 7

DAIRY RESEARCH.

ONE DOMINION LABORATORY. DR. GIL'RUTH’S OPINION. Concentration on one big Dominion laboratory, in which a highly trained staff of specialists would have all the facilities available for research which strong financial backing would give, is favoured by Dr. A. .T. Gilruth. as being a better means of conducting research into the problems of the dairy industry than local laboratories maintained by a comparatively small circle of farmers with the aid of a Government subsidy. 1 Knowing Dr. Gilruth’s interests in the scientific side of the dairy industry, a Taranaki Daily News reported asked him for his opinion on the subject.

“Don’t think for a minute _ that I am decrying the incentive which has led to the establishment of the laboratory bv the farmers in South Taranaki.” Dr. Gilruth said. “I am not. But what is going to happen? The Waikato will probably set up a laboratory with the aid of a subsidy. Hawke’s Bay may set up another, and still other districts. Don’t you think that much better results would be accomplished if all these moves were united in one big joint effort? Will any one of them be able to provide all the facilities required to do the job properly? Will it not lead to dissipation of effort rather than concentration?”

“Some people have the idea that milk from different districts is different.” Dr. Gilruth said. “Believe me, a drop of milk, whether it be from the Bluff or from the North Gape, is just a drop of milk. This is a national matter: not a matter for local effort. Good work Will be done at the South Taranaki laboratory, I have no doubt: but much better results would-be obtained if all the farmers in New Zealand concentrated on one big laboratory and put up the money that would enable a highly trained staff to be employed and that would have the best plant to work with.” To such a laboratory farmers, in Dr. Gilruth’s opinion, should be encouraged to pay regular visits and thus obtain some idea of the scientific side of dairying as it affected them. Dr. Gilruth did not want the dairy farmers to become scientists. That was unnecessary, he said, but by paying visits to the laboratory they would learn something of the way in which their faults or successes in producing the raw material affected other processes in the turning out of the highest quality produce.

The establishment of such a laboratory was a matter for the farmers themselves, Dr. Gilruth added. It was no use them going to the Government for it, because they had to pay for it in the end. It was the primary producer who created the wealth of the Dominion, and it was from him that all money for enterprises of that nature must come. The Government itslf had no money; it had only what the producers produced. The Government establishment of a laboratory such as he had mentioned would simply mean that the producers were paying indirectly for something which they would be better advised to pay direct and control.