MOISTURE IN BUTTER.

Feilding Star, Volume III, Issue 764, 29 December 1908, Page 4

MOISTURE IN BUTTER.

HOW IT AFFECTS THE BUYER. The question of moisture in butter is still exercising the minds of Wellington factors, and so far from New Zealand butter being far too dry, as was the case a few years ago, the complaint is now that some of it contains altogether too much moisture In the report of the Agricultural Department for 1908 it is stated that during the season 1906-7, a number of cases were detected in Great Britain, where some New Zealand butters were containing a percentage of moisture exceeding that allowed by British law. On Ist January, 1908, the Butter and Margarine Act came into force in the United Kingdom, which made it all the more necessary that the moisture contents in our butter should be checked, and at the same date as the British Act above referred to, become operative the New Zealand Butter Export Act also came into force by which the maximum of moisture was limited to 16 per cent. The dairy commissioner (Mr D. Ouddie) recently had stoppjed several lines of Taranaki butter intended for shipment on account of their excessive moisture and the aggregate of boxes so dealt with was considerable, amounting to some hundreds. Some of the percentages were as high as 25 per cent, of moisture. Yesterday the head of a butter firm in Wellington informed a Post representative that butter was still coming in from farmers containing as much as 30 per cent, of moisture. This was not for export in th© condition it left the farm, and there was in any case no chance for butter so heavily charged with moisture to escape the Government graders. No mischief, therefore, would be done to the reputation of New Zealand butter by an article of this sort. At the same time, there was nothing to prevent such butter getting into the local markets in the dominion itself, and, as a matter of fact,- it was being freely sold. The butters bought for milling and shipped as milled butter sometimes contain 25 per cent., 29 per cent., and even over 30 per cent, of moisture. As they are sent Home with an average of 10 per cent., it will be seen that the buyer is paying the market price for an article which is losing him from 15 per cent, to 19 per cent, in extracted moisture.