BUTTER FRAUDS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 20, Issue 70, 3 September 1909, Page 4

BUTTER FRAUDS.

HOW NEW ZEALAND BUTTER IS EXPLOITED.' A northern settler, Mr Albert S; Board, of Hangatiki, paid a visit to England recently, and spent some months in the Western Counties, where he had farmed over twenty years ago, He made it his business to follow up New Zealand produce, and whenever opportunity offered investigated the sale of our butter and meat. Being an observant man, he learnt many interesting things. PROM CHEESE TO CITY SUPPLY. In his English farming days Somersetshire was a great Cheddar cheese country, the making being in the bands of the womenfolk of the farms. Since I then a factory was established, but the co-operative cheese never equalled that made on the farms, and the project was not a success. Cheese-making in Somersetshire is not, however, what it used to be. English cities and towns have considerably extended, and the demand for milk is diverting the milk from cheese to the city supply trade. Mr Board noticed at the rural railway stations little depots, which, on investigation, proved to be for the reception of milk. Here the, milk is taken from the farmers’ cans, for conveyance to London or the big manufacturing cities. Any milk over is separated and made into butter. Over the door of the depots is a sign “ No admittance,” but Mr Board did not let this stand in his way. He wanted to learn all he could. The first thing to attract his attention on entering one of the depots was a New Zealand butterbox bearing the “Bay of Plenty "Butter Company’s brand. He kicked the box, and remarked to a man who was manipulating butter on a butter table: “This is pretty good wood.” “Oh, yes,” replied the man, “it comes from New Zealand.” Mr Board discovered by a cautious cross-examination that the New Zealand butter was used to mix with any butter made from the left-over milk, put up into half-pound pats, and sent to the markets as “ Best Devonshire!”

Mr Board subsequently found that “ Devonshire ” butter, selling at Is 4d to Is 6d a pound, was to be had in every part of England; in fact, he remarked, if there was a cow on every acre of land in Devonshire, and if every cow produced twenty podnds of butter a week, the Horae butter country could not produce half the butter sold as being produced in it.