STANDARDISED CHEESE.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 November 1930, Page 8

STANDARDISED CHEESE.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —I see the Empire Marketing Board has allotted £2OOO per annum for four years for our scientists to investigate the faults in cheese texture, peculiar only to certain parts of New Zealand, where Jersey cattle are almost exclusively used. It is a pity that the £BOOO could not be used to import some suitable cattle, as then in four years we would be well on the way to rectify the trouble. With regard to standardised cheese it seems a half-hearted attempt by the Dairy Division to justify its encouragement of the excessive production of fat and an attempt to invent a new cheese, which according to regulations is neither cheddar nor cream cheese, but a halfway between the two, having the characteristics of neither, but a very decided characteristic of its own “veritable confusion.” I can hardly see how our great men who are paid to do our scientific work could expect anything else when you take into consideration that the prescribed formula is practically one-third fat, one-third water and one-third of what we will call casein, etc. These three ingredients will only mix as their nature will permit them to combine. They are, one the contrary, each inclined to collect individually and will all retain their respective characteristics. The fat- and the water are both affected in a pronounced degree by the variations of temperature that the cheese is to be subjected to, probably from below 30 degrees to as high as 85 degees. One doesn’t need to be a scientist to know that water expands appreciably at the higher temperature and that butter-fat has a melting point at about 70 degrees; or that small particles of either if they have a chance precipitate and assemble and there is no doubt' that water evaporates when exposed to air at even moderate temperatures. The other solids would be fairly stable, except that they would when exposed to the air possibly contract through the evaporation of moisture and thus expose a further surface. It is very hard to understand how any scientist could expect this mixture, havincr to go through the ordeal it has, to come through and retain the characteristics of either one of the elements that it is composed of. I don’t know why when our great dairy men ordained standardised cheese they did not prescribe the right ingredients and emulate the chase of 15 years ago instead of trying to make the unsatisfactory make of two years ago. The question seems to be, shall we persevere'with butter-fat development and make cream cheese with its limited market and resign the cheddar cheese with its vast possibilities to anybody who wants it, or go in for dairy cows with/ properly balanced milk?—l am, etc., J. FEAVER, JUNE., November 16, 1930.