NEW ZEALAND BUTTER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20960, 25 August 1931, Page 11

NEW ZEALAND BUTTER.

THE GOAL OP QUALITY. NEED OF "BRIGHT" FLAVOUR. ELIMINATION OF TAINTS. ■ . - IMPORTANT RESEARCH WORK. No. IL Evidence has been accumulating that the Home market, especially that in the North of England, esrpects a little more of New Zealand butter than exporters have recognised, until quite lately. In the effort to turn out uniformly highgrade butter, New Zealand factories have worked wonders by eliminating Savours or taints that might offend a fastidious' palate. In the process the distinctive natural flavour, or " mflV bouquet," of freshly-made farm butter has tended to disappear. The Danes, working under much easier conditions of shipment, have, managed to preserve it in the best of their output, and the English consumer is not unwilling to pay a little more for Danish burter than for New Zealand., largely on that account.

How to make batter which will have this delicate aroma in just the right degree after two montfts'or more in cold storage is the problem with which the industry is now faced. There is little doubt that it will be solved, but only by painstaking effort. The Department of Agriculture has not been backward in the xqaiter. Special batches of buiter have been made in its experimental factory at Massey College under the closest supervision. Portions of these have been shipped to Britain and the rest kept in cool store" in New Zealand. In this way the life-history of each batch is being traced and recorded over a period of months. Flavours From Feed. The new butters are also being submitted for the opinion of English tasters and the department's own graders in London. Moreover, the chief dairy produce grader in Auckland. Mr. E. C. Wood, is being sent to England for at least a year to report upon the condition of butter arriving there and generally to link up the New Zealand experiments with English opinion of their results. The ability of New Zealand dairy factory managers to make superfine butter with either a " bright" or|- a bland flavour is undoubted,, but the adjustment for storage is not quite so easy. In the past their efforts have been ' directed mainly to doing away with all undesirable taints, and if some butter graded, "finest" has been rather characterless to the English palate, the factory managers are not to be greatly blamed. Taints in butter are of two kinds, due to bacteria and to organic substances derived from feed. The characteristic flavour now being sought, is produced by the benevolent lactic acid bacteria essential to the butter-making process. • It will probably be obtained in general practice by very carefully adjusted use of " starters," or specially prepared, cultures to control the ripening of the cream after it reaches the. factory. - Keenness oi Factory Men. New Zealand butter-makers as a body j are quite equal to any task of the kind that may be set them. For keenness and efficiency it would be hard to find a better group oi industrial technicians the world over. In no industry are results so closely watched and recorded. A dairy factory manager is on his mettle the whole time, "for if he does not maintain a good ' grading level his job will soon, be forI feit. Every manager strives to improve ! his factory's place On the Dominion merit I list for average grading, and the various i district challenge trophies are eagerly I sought. The discussions at annual con- | ferences are another proof of keenness I and enthusiasm. ' •'

While the butter-maker does his best, and a very good best it usually is, ho remains to a very large degree in tha bands of his suppliers. Unless they send him really good cream he cannot, guarantee optimum aesults. He is not a, miracle-worker, a],though he often does wonders with cream that is some way below par. Primarily, of course, the responsibility is on the dairy farmer. He often has troubles to contend with, but of them few are beyond the power of persistent effort to overcome. Possible defects in cream are many. At least 20 different bad flavours have been listed, and ' some of them may be due to one or more of » dozen causes. The Cow and Her Diet.' Feed-Savours, the hardest to prevent, arts sometimes inherent in the pasture. It hi known that certain plants, such as ryegrass, timothy, cocksfoot, paspalum and white clover produce the best-flavoured cream - Cow-grass, subterranean clover, trefoil, lotus major and lucerne impart a distinctive Savour, and if present hi large proportion they prevent the cream from being classed as "finest." The health of the cow also enters into the problem. She requires a more or less varied and well-proportioned diet and pure drinking water. Changes of food ars> necessary, but if too drastic they are bound to affect the quality of the milk.This is specially noticeable in spring, when a herd is changed over from a winter, diet of hay to one of early grass. At that time feed "flavours give most, trouble all the Dominion over.

Excess of roots is another- coipmon cause of low-graded cream. Yet another, is the eating of non-fodder plants, especially, buttercup, watercress, and pennvroyaL Many feed-Savours. are due to the presence in the cream of identifiable essential oils and vapours derived from tha plants which the . cow has ' eaten. Pa steurising the cream does much to remove or reduce them, and there is a highlycommended patent vacuum process for dealing with all taints having a chemical origin. Local Research Heeded.

The matter, however, is basically one of pasture and stock management- Latterly there has been much discussion on the * point •whether intensive top-dressing affects the quality of milk and cream, and it is well Insown that the composition of pastures has changed considerably on some classes of country. It is a reasonable assumption that -where dairy farming passes out of the pioneering stage and pastures are completely established and gradually improved the quality of the product must tend to rise. New Zealand has a unique climate from' : the dairyman's point of view, but the experience of less-favoured countries in animal husbandry is not sufficient to deal witfs. the special problems that arise here. The whole wide subject of nutrition, as Lord Bledifiloe has emphasised, needs _ a vast amount of local research. In tins much may be expected from the experts at the Dairy Research Institute, Massey College, for many years to come. - "That the pioneer settlers and dairy farmers "of New Zealand have accomplished so much by practical ' 'trial and error methods, gives very bright promise of what may be done in future when more science is brought to the farmer's aid.