BETTER BUTTER

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 162, 25 June 1935, Page 11

BETTER BUTTER

Dairy Farmers’ Complaint PASTEURISING PROBLEM At the present time considerable prominence is being given to the newly-framed dairy regulations, designed to improve the quality of the cream and milk delivered to the factories. So far the regulations chiefly apply to the requisite cleanliness of the buildings, machinery and plant used on the dairy farm, but while it is felt, even by dairy fanners themselves, that much can be done in this sphere, the general opinion is that still greater reforms can be effected in the dairy factories themselves, according to the “N.Z. Herald.”

As support to this contention, farmers cite the fact that some years ago, when the farm milking-shed conditions were considerably worse than they are to-day, our butter more nearly approached the Danish in popularity on the markets of Great Britain, It is, they say, only since the pasteurising system has been widely adopted by the factories that our butter has lost favour among consumers. In the old days it was essential for the factory manager to keep first and second quality cream separate, and to make therefrom two distinct grades of butter. To-day, despite the differentiation in price between “finest,” “first” and “second” grades, these are all put together in the factory and pasteurisation at a high temperature is relied upon to extract the harmful and objectionable flavours of the lower grade creams.

The principle employed in pasteurising is, briefly, to raise the temperature of the cream in a steam-jacket ed cylinder to a point where the volatile gases carrying the flavours, good and bad, are released from the cream, and these are drawn off by the creation of a certain amount of vacuum. The dairy farmers contend, with some justification, that this process extracts from the butters the flavours which overseas cousumers like, and also destroys the texture of the butter.