N.Z. DAIRY PRODUCE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 26 January 1925, Page 4

N.Z. DAIRY PRODUCE.

NEAV COMPETITION TO FACE.

ENGLISH PRODUCERS STIRRING

Various items of outstanding inteiest to the dairy producers of New Zealand are contained in British newspapers just to hand, all indicating tha a period of greater competition and keener organisation must be faced m future by New Zealand producers (remarks a statement issued by the New Zealand Dairy Control Board). . In order to develop British industries, the Ministry of Agriculture has embarked upon a national campaign throughout Great Britain to organise dairv farmers for competition on the Home markets. This campaign was opened before the Cheshire Cheesemakers’ Federation in November by Mr. J. F. Blackstone, Dairy Commissioner of the Ministry of Agriculture, when he urged an improved general standard in the manufacture or Cheshire cheese to counter the demand in Britain for imported cheese. The registration of clieesemakers and the adoption of a national trade mark were suggestions advanced by the Commissioner. The federation was readily converted by Mr. Blackstone’s advocacy of reform, and urged the Government to protect farmers by putting into force the Merchandise Marks Bill. USE OF PRESERVATIVES. Of even more importance to the dairy industry is perhaps the definite campaign that has been launched to secure purity in foodstuffs by the elimination of all preservatives. This is the main recommendation of the committee of the Health Ministry, which has mad© an exhaustive inquiry into the “use of preservative and colouring matters in food,” and as an outcome recommends the total prohibition of all preservatives except in a few specific cases. Following on this recommendation, English papers show that heavy advertising expenditures were undertaken by the distributors of Danish butter and margarine, emphasising that these products did not contain preservative. These advertisements would naturally react to the disadvantage of New Zealand butter, in the manufacture of which a limited amount of preservative has been customarily used. At the moment the New Zealand producers are without the ability to defend the purity of their product upon the British market against such attacks, which may ultimatey have a very material bearing upon New Zealand’s dairy industry. POOLS FOR FOODSTUFFS.

In the course of the present inquiry by the Royal Commission on food prices, some very interesting views in connection with co-operative marketing were advanced by different witnesses. One authority, in reviewing the Australian wheat position, said he believed there would presently be producers’ pools for most foodstuffs, but they would have to be compulsory, because unless the whole of the producers of a commodity joined together the effort would fail. Voluntary cooperation in the past had sometimes been successful, but more often it had been a failure, simply because of the weakness represented by having only part of the industry associated in the venture, leaving the balance to act as a dead .weight or competitor against the. measures adopted to improve the position of the product. The only remedy therefore lay in the compulsory pooling of producers’ outputs. Questioned on these views it was conceded bv the witness that the natural corollary to this was the development of co-operative purchasing organisations amongst consumers.