DAIRY FACTORY REPORTS

Southland Times, Issue 24237, 21 September 1940, Page 11

DAIRY FACTORY REPORTS

To The Editor Sir, —In your issue of September 17 appears a letter written over the penname, “Butterfat.” Your correspondent certainly does not credit me with over much knowledge of dairy factory affairs, but I would first of all inform him that both my oral and written reports, together with the balance-sheet of the Menzies Ferry Dairy Company, were unanimously and harmoniously adopted at the annual meeting. I am satisfied your correspondent is not a supplier of this factory; he would seem to be one of these quarter horsepower misfit Jersey breeders. The statements he attributes to me are conspicuously distorted to the extent that they make ammunition for the time-worn controversy, “the battle of the breeds,” in which I am not interested (much). I am content to leave that to Mr Kallaugher and his well-known Southland adversary. This is the season of the year for it; the bull fair is in the offing. His letter should really be treated with contempt, but perhaps I should refer to the distorted account he gives of what was actually said and what actually took place at the meeting. He says that our costs had increased in one year by £1550 and asks how I could expect another half-penny to be available. This, Mr Editor, will give your readers some idea of the mentality of your correspondent. To say that in one year with a 400-ton output costs would increase to this extent would surely imply a set of circumstances very abnormal, and it does not require a “wizard of finance” (just the average sense of the common goat should suffice) to appreciate the stupidity of his statement. The rise in costs quoted by me was the figure taken over a period of years. No supplier at our factory objects to our 3.95 per. cent, average test,- but there are some who do object to paying on a butterfat basis milk testing 5 per cent, and over and these suppliers are entitled to their opinions and have a just right to voice them at the annual meeting, where discussions of this nature should end. No supplier who attended the meeting can say the discussion was in any way curbed by me. If all is well with us in August 1941, I extend to “Butterfat” a hearty invitation to attend our annual meeting, when and where I hope we shall have figures which will be of interest to him My advice to “Butterfat” is to milk Ayrshires and thereby be of good cheer, regain that contented look and cease his continual grouse.—Yours, etc., A. M. WEIR. September 20, 1940.