STANDARDISED CHEESE

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXXII, Issue 2762, 14 August 1931, Page 7

STANDARDISED CHEESE

INTERESTING EXPERIMENT. ! CRATES FROM ENGLAND. An interesting experiment has been •conducted by the Hauraki Plains Cooperative Dairy Company, of Turua. During the height of the controversy on the question of standardised cheese, the directors decided to see for themselves hew the company’s product opened up on the London market, and whether' the complaints were justified. Accordingly, instructions were sent to the J i ndon agents to return one crate of full cream cheese and one of standardised cheese. These arrived back in New Zealand recently and were displayed at the annual meeting of suppliers at Turua on Wednesday. The two crates 'had been made bn the same day and shipped at the same time. On going away the grading for the vats, of . which they formed parts, had been 93 ■ in the case of the full-cream cheese . and 913 for the standardised, so that their quality was about the average. On their return to New Zealand the crates were submitted to the grade " store for examination, and in the presence of the head officials of the Dairy Division the full-cream, cheese was awarded 92 points and the standardised cheese 90 points. Thus ’ eight • months after manufacture, and after having travelled around the world, both crates were still finest grade. Most of the suppliers who examined and tasted samples of the two cheeses could not tell which had been-made from full cream and which had been ■standardised, and opinions were equally divided as to which was which. In fact, so slight was the difference that any ordinary person would be pardoned for thinking that the two half ■cheeses -on view had been one cheese cut in half. 1 [ There was certainly nothing to justify any complaint about either cheese arid the opinion was freely expressed by suppliers that the complaints

which had reached New Zealand about the quality of standardised cheese had been organised by interested people for their own ends. After thoroughly testing both * samples, many suppliers expressed surprise that the Government graders could find sufficient reason for the difference of two points in the grading marks allotted, and some wondered if the difference was accounted for by the fact that the graders knew what points had previously been allotted, and that the one crate was standardised cheese, and the othei' full-Cream cheese. General satisfaction was expressed at the satisfactory way the company’s ’ cheese had opened up, and the directors were complimented on having had : the experiment made. So great has been the agitation ■against ’standardised cheese that its export from New Zealand is now prohibited. regulations to that effect having been issued a week or so ago. . Standardised cheese was required by ■regulation to have a certain butterfat content, and thus when rich milk- • wasi received it was possible to separate a portion and sell the cream. However, those factories in districts where low testing milk was supplied were not able to standardise, as even - vith rhe use of whole milk the cheese manufactured did not contain the required proportion of fat. In the flush of the season much full cream is exported, particularly from the South Island, which has a lower fat -content than standardised cheese