UNDER-WEIGHT BUTTER.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1577, 4 March 1919, Page 9

UNDER-WEIGHT BUTTER.

SEFTON COMPANY CHARGED. £lO FINE IMPOSED. . The Sefton Mutual Dairy Produce Association, Ltd., was charged before Mr S. E. McCarthy, S.M., at the Magistrate's Court this morning with selling butter in a package with a misleading statement printed thereon, and also with enclosing butter in a package bearing a misleading statement. Mr W. M. Hamilton appeared for the. Public Health Department, and Mr AValton for the defendant company, on behalf of which he entered a plea of not guilty. Mr Hamilton said that on January 23 Inspector Kershaw purchased a package of butter in Kaiapoi, and on weighing it found it to be only a little over 15 ounces, although the package bore a statement to the fact that the weight was one pound. The inspector the'n weighed five packages together with this one, and the gross weight was found to bo 51b 14Joz. The Act provided that if six packages of butter, when weighed together, gave full weight or were over the weight, no prosecution would follow. In this ease, however, the six packages together gave tinder weight. Mr Hamilton said that at a later date an inspector of the Health Department had weighed six pats and had found three full weight and three under weight. It would seem, therefore, that the defendant company was systematically sending out under-weight butter. Mr Walton said that the butter had been sent out at a time when the factory was disorganised on account of the influenza epidemic. It had been impossible to get experienced labour, and the manager of the butter factory had worked 19 hours a day for eight consecutive days. Mr Walton pointed out that some of the butter was over weight. The Magistrate remarked that the fact that the butter was being sent out under weight seemed to show the work of experienced men, not inexperienced men.

A fine of £lO and £2 9/- costs was imposed on the first charge, and the other charge, being alternative, was withdrawn.