OF EMPIRE SIGNIFICANCE

Taranaki Daily News, 20 November 1930, Page 10

OF EMPIRE SIGNIFICANCE

OPENNESS IN CHEESE PROBLEM. NOT CONFINED TO NEW ZEALAND.

The secretary of the Empire Marketing Board sends the following note from London: The Empire Marketing Board has made a grant of £3OO capital and £2OOO a ye..r for four years to the Dairy Roseate 1 ’ Institute at Massey College for a special investigation of the problem of “openness” in cheese. In recent yeaps New Zealand cheese has been handicapped by its open texture, which is considered a disadvantage by the trade. Openness is, in fact, the biggest problem 'confronting the industry, and has been estimated to cause New Zealand a loss of £1,000.000 a year. It takes the form of holes in the body of the cheese, which vary in form and distribution, and so far research has failed to supply a final explanation of its cause. The Dairy Research Institute, financed. jointly by the dairy farmers themselves through the New Zealand Dairy Produce Board and by the Government, has for two years been making a thorough study of the origin and pauses of this fault, .Experiments have

shown that fundamental work on cheesemaking processes must b« carried out before the real cause of openness can •be discovered and a cure suggested. A research scheme has, therefore, been planned and the Empire Marketing Board has agreed to support it. The importance of the New Zealand cheese industry, both to the Dominion and to the United Kingdom, is clearly shown in the fact that 89,000 tons, valued at over £7,000,000, was exported last year, and all of this came to the United Kingdom. A number of theories affecting methods of manufacture are to be tested and special research into the chemistry and bacteriology of cheese-making is to be carried out.

The problem of openness is of Empire significance, for it occurs in cheese from other producing countries including Australia, and the United Kingdom. The Dairy Research Institute is. co-operat-ing in trial shipments with the National Institute for ■ Research in Dairying near Reading, which is also carrying out special studies of other faults, such as fishiness” in butter and ’Ted spot” in cheese, in dairy produce under grants from the Empire Marketing Board,