DAIRY INDUSTRY

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7869, 3 August 1911, Page 8

DAIRY INDUSTRY

DEPARTMENT’S WORK INTERESTING ADDRESS BY THE HON. T. MACKENZIE. PRESS ASSOCIATION. DUNEDIN, August 2Tim Hon. T. Mackenzie, Minister of Agriculture, address'd a meeting of dairy farmers to-day in the direciiou of fostering the dairy industry. (living an outline of the efforts made bv tin: Government to promote the interests of Hie people on the land and generally those of the Dominion. he "numerated these as follow .During the Just year TIO,SGS had been expended in assisting dairy farmers and in controlling the dairy industry, and a staff of tweuty-onc officers was employed, including graders and instructors, besides which there were a number of men employed in clerical work. The scope of the division included instruction in butter and checaeniaking. grading dairy produce, herd testing, inspection of daily farm premises, instruction in handling milk, instruction and control of all dairy factories, skimming stations, organisation of new dairy companies, supplying plans of factories and of cowsheds, testing milk, cream testing. butler and cheese moisture —in fact, every branch oi dairy work received attention from the officers of this division. instructors in butter and cbeesemaking were always available to dairy companies in need o£ assistance, when the officers wore not fully employed in complying with requests for help of this nature from tho factories. The officers were taking an active part iu assisting managers to improve tho quality of their cheese or butter. perhaps the most important duties of the officers of the dairy produce division were grading and classification of butter arid cheese for oversea markets. Every consignment arriving at tho port of shipment was carefully examined, stamped with the official grade and a'grade certificate furnished to the factory showing the number of points allotted to butter and cheese, with special remarks as to defects, if any., Tho weights wore also checked, and this was also recorded in the report.

GROWTH OE THE INDUSTRY. Two years ago the first eow-tosting association was established under Government control, with a members bin of twenty-seven, owning TCfl cows, and it proved eminently successful. Last year three additional associations were formed and records of -1158 cows had been complied. The' movement had been' well received, and there was every prospect of extending it. Two now associations were to bo in running order for tho coming season, and the total number or cows to bo, tested would bo in the neighbourhood'of GOOO, In , giving , instructions in die handling and care of milk on dairy farms some IdOU farms had been visited lor the purpose of helping the settlers. Many hundreds of new floors were being put down in milking sheds on the advice of tho instructors, yards had been improved and hundreds of milk-stands had been moved to better positions. More than 75 per cent, of the.factories adopted the pasteurising of cream for buttermaking. The speaker went on to enumerate other ways in .which tho department helped fanners, among them being the organising of new dairy companies, twenty-seven for cheese and eight for butter being started during tho last year. * Ho dilated on the advantages of pasteurisation of milk, and of by-pro-dnets. i)uite a number of dairy companies had this matter under consideration, and it was likely that the coming season would see a largo number of skimmilk plants in use. TUBERCULOSIS IN PIGS. Tho Glen Oroua demonstration ran for a whole season, the result being carefully checked, tbe net result being that the efficacy of proper pasteurisation was conclnsively proved. On one hand all pigs led entirely on pasteurised milk remained perfectly free from tuberculosis, with the exception of twenty-two, which were found on investigation to have been exposed to direct infection either from hadly-disoased pigs or diseased cows. These twenty-two were distributed among only' six suppliers to the factory, the whole of the remaining suppliers—nineteen in number—getting off without a single pig fed from wholly-pasteurised milk being in any degree affected. On the other /hand, pigs from tho same immediate neighbourhood which . were fed partly or. wholly by milk which had not been pasteurised showed that a very high percentage were affected with tuberculosis. The following were the figures Number fed on wholly-pasteurised milk, 031; number found affected, 23 (G.GI per cent.), GRADING IN BUTTER For some time it had been considered that advantage would accrue to the dairy industry by specially marketing as "superfine” all _ butter scoring on 1-J points or over, it being considered that the range between the quality of butter below that standard and that consider-, abiy above it was too wide. If this could be brought into force it should b.e an incentive to dairy companies to strive to improve tho quality of tho lower first grade so as to obtain the distinction of the superfine market. It would also he a guarantee to tho merchant or buyer that butter shipped according to contract would be of prime quality—that is to say, if the contract was for tho superfine article. He adverted to the importance of the pork industry spoke of tho methods to prevent contagions abortion, and dealt with poultry. Then, referring to the efforts of Die department to improve the dairy herds, he concluded by referring to tho future as follows: — REPLY TO PESSIMISTS,

He would say' just one word regarding the position and prospects of Now Zealand. They had heard a good 'deal about the flight of capital, tho indications of a period of depression, find tho evils of borrowing, etc. They had recently heard that the position of our Dominion was very serious, because there was a lessened margin between, imports and exports; but they had to look not only' to imports and exports, but to the internal development. VVliat a splendid history our country showed during the past twenty-one years in internal accumulation and external trade! It was undoubted that in a country like this they required a surplus of exports to bo on tho right side, and tho position was entirely altered in their favour in recent years—taldng the nineteen years prior to ISS9, when the' balance was on the ■wrong side, namely, a surplus of -C12,000,000 imports over exports, whereas for the years ISSO to 1910 tho balance had been overwhelmingly on the other side, n’amely .t’01,500,000 of surplus exports over imports. (Applause.) Concurrent with that export value had been an internal accumulation at the rate of .£lO,000,000 yearly, or a total of .£211,000,000 daring these years, -.t was contended by some that this internal development was largely due to increase in land value*?, and in part that was so; but on a basis of sales that had taken place tho values of land showed an average of 30 per cent, above the valuations. (Applause.) llcgarding borrowing, they must be careful; but properly-expended borrowed money electrified and revived every industry in tho community. 'This was tho means by which wo applied tho accumulated wealth of other parts of the world —without requiring to wait through a long period of years to gradually accumulate it, if such were possible, ourselves. Iu 1910 Great Britain supplied Canadian people with about dMO,(KH),OCO new capital, and for three years—l9oS-9-10—furn-ished them with .£120.000,000. The Mother Country now supplied Canada with nearly .£500,000,000 of capital either publicly or privately, and Australia with" something like A-liK) J ()(lO J ooo|_and the fact I

that Austi abasia and Canada had boon abb- tu utilise that accumulated wealth had yiven them a stimulus such as could not; have .been scoured by any other process. lie might mention that in connection with the Department of Agriculture, operations in the cities cere being considered as well as iu other portions of New Zealand, and every elfort was being made to improve the suppliers and brina them up to the highest possible levelit would be interesting to those present to know that in connection with tho bacteria, test of milk in Dunedin, tho mill: of spine fifty herds in the vicinity of the city had been tested and not a single sample had boon condemned. This spoke volumes for the health of the herds in the neighbourhood of Dunedin.