The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. TUESDAY, JUNE 19, 1928. THE DUNDERHEAD

Southland Times, Issue 20516, 19 June 1928, Page 6

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. TUESDAY, JUNE 19, 1928. THE DUNDERHEAD

Inquiries supplementing the information possessed by the Farmers’ Union will strengthen rather than weaken the value of their protest against the recent prosecution of two farmers for disposing of butter containing more than 16 per cent, of moisture, the maximum permitted by the regulations. The circumstances of the two defendants is an aggravating factor, but it should not be stressed, because the facts of the cases are more than sufficiently damning without this addition. Attacks on the regulation are unwise, because an allowance of 16 per cent, of moisture is not placed too low; it represents one-sixth of the content, and most factory-made butter keeps well up to this mark. It must be remembered that wherever this limit is placed offences will be disclosed and the margin of error in some cases will be small, so that it is unwise to make too much of the fact that the defendant’s butter was only onehalf of one per cent, over the maximum allowed; but the admitted difficulty of discovering the amount of moisture in the Butter must be faced and that fact is enough to reveal the weakness of the energetic officer who has brought this matter sharply before the public eye. It may be accepted that farmers cannot instal and use the instruments necessary for the exact determination of the proportion of moisture in their butter, but the regulation must stand as a protection against the exploitation of the consumer. How, then, is it to be applied without preventing the farmers selling their own butter? The answer to that is easy. It can be secured by the removal beyond mischief of such dunderheads as the officer who pressed these prosecutions. He is a man who sees the words of the law and cannot see the law itself. He can justify a prosecution by the sentences of the law, but if he were equipped with reasonable understanding he would realize that his action was opposed to the law itself. Those regulations are designed to protect the consumer. It is known that factories run to the limit of the 16 per cent, of moisture, but that farmers generally are far below that mark. If these prosecutions resulted tn the installation of testing apparatus on farms the farmers would proceed to raise the moisture margin of their butter and the law would be the instrument by which conditions were made worse than they are now. Was that the design of the law? Nothing has been offered to show why the prosecution was undertaken. These regulations are preventative in character—they do not aim at the creation of offenders and surely the sensible, the effective method of applying them is to issue warnings so that the accidental, isolated offence may not be repeated. No evidence has been led to show that either defendant was a persistent offender, and had been warned, in fact we are under the impression that these two were “caught” in something akin to a general drive, and not as a result of specific complaints. If they have offended persistently and in the face of warnings have been contumacious they cannot plead for sympathy, but the Health Department’s officer should have disclosed all that as part of his case if it existed. If it did not exist he is a departmental dunderhead, a blunderer who should be put where he cannot repeat mischief of this sort, and bring sound regulations into disrepute. The propet treatment of this officer would remind others that in a sound, beneficial administration the purpose of Government officials is to assist not to harass, to act intelligently within the spirit and aim of the law, not to use the limits it must employ as the excuse for officiousness and

self-glory. To the protests of the Farmers’ Union the proper answer is the removal of this officer for bringing the law into disrepute, and the introduction of measures to prevent any other dunderhead of the Health Department from emulating his manoeuvres.