CANADIAN BUTTER PACKAGES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1797, 15 August 1906, Page 55

CANADIAN BUTTER PACKAGES.

A correspondent at Petone who recently obtained through the “'Canadian Dairyman” Publishing Company, at Toronto, Canada, a work on creamery butter making, by Professor Michels, 8.5. A., formerly Instructor in Dairying at tho Michigan State Agricultural College, South Carolina, U.S.A., noticing that an allowance of lib per 561 b box was recommended for shrinkage on export butter, wrote to the author for an explanation. The reference in the above mentioned work to shrinkage is as follows : Foreign Trade Packages.—For export trade butter is preferably packed in cubical spruce boxes lined with' paraffin and holding 56lbs. These boxes are prepared by rinsing them with cold brine, and then lining with doublo thickness of parchment paper which has been soaked in strong brine. Tho boxes are now weighed and carefully packed, after which they are trimmed down to a weight-ft 57lbs, which allows one pound for shrinkage. Finish tho packing by placing a doublo thickness of parchment paper over the top, and upon this over saturated brine. Professor Michels replies as under:— “In relation to the statement ill my book as to allowing one pound for shrinkage in the 561 b foreign trade packages, will say that this amount is allowed for the reason that packages are doubly lined with parchment paper which is placed in the Trackages directly from a salt brill© bath. This, of course, leaves it quite wet, which, together with the saturated salt placed on top of the parchment, will cause a greater shrinkage in weight than you find in the New Zealand boxes, in which the parchment, as I understand, is placed dry. I may say in this connection, however, that in our domestic trade, butter packed in sixty pound tubs we usually allow |ib in shrinkage, but this butter is packed in tubs which aro only singly lined, and there is not nearly as much chance for shrinkage in weight owing to the fact that the butter is consumed shortly after manufacturing.”