HOME SEPARATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14767, 24 August 1911, Page 6

HOME SEPARATION.

GOOD AND BAD FEATURES.

The business aspect of "home separation" as an alternative to the creamery system was dealt with at.length by Mr. Wesley Spragg in his address to the annual meeting of the shareholders of the New Zealand Dairy Associatiop yesterday. He wished 2 he said, to give homo separation all the commendation it was entitled to, as it had some good features as well as bad ones.

The butter generally made from collected cream was inferior, though it need not be, if everybody did everything as'they should. The United States, where the system originated, furnished conspicuous examples of failure to produce high-class quality; Australia was probably little or no better, and that New Zealand can collect little drops of cream, and bulk them with satisfactory results, was not in the least likely. After dealing with the ruling prices obtained for the lower qualities of butter in Australia, Auckland, and- London, Mr. Spragg referred to the losses made in home separation. Accepting 9£d or 9.60 das being the net price paid for the butter-fat in the cream supplied, a serious deduction had still to be accounted for, the loss made through the. homo separator. The average of this loss was reported by the dairy schools of the United States as 0.25 per cent., or almost 71b out of every hundred of all the fat in a 3.6 per cent, milk, and this seven per cent, would be paid for if it was purchased in milk form. A" good separator, run with regularity and skill, will not lose so much; but managers of New Zealand co-operative homo separator cream factories had reported losses in separating as running up in some cases to 10 per cent. New Zealand home separator butter probably had sold in London at a batter price than Australian; but that was because up to the present it had been sold on tho reputation, made- by the creamery manufacture, and under tho brand of "pure creamery butter," a description which many homo separator factories wei*o anxious to continue to use. Home-separated cream butter should be exported under' its proper description, and sold on its own merits; but until a proper descriptive export brand, was- sanctioned by the Government the makers had no option but to send it under the present false classification. They had no quarrel with the home separator business if honestly carried on under its own name, and believed it should be fostered in remote places, where distances were great and roads not practicable for a creamery centre.

The company's present policy with regard to home-separated cream was the hi the meantime they would take it when, desired, upon the same terms and prices a3 for butter-fat delivered in milk form, the cost of carriage from the point of delivery to the contra! factory being borne by the company.