DAIRY FEDERATION TESTS

Taranaki Daily News, 23 December 1930, Page 7

DAIRY FEDERATION TESTS

WORK ON STANDARDISED CHEESE.

HAWERA’S SAVING TO INDUSTRY.

Last season was remarkable for the great ; volume of standardised cheese manufactured, 'said Mr.-P. 0. Veale in his report to the Federation of Taranaki Co-operative Dairy' Factories yesterday. The federation executive foresaw that the regulations requiring an analysis of every vat of such cheese might not (be permanent, and saved' federated companies from the expense of installing electric ovens and other testing apparatus by undertaking on their behalf the, analysis of« their -cheese at cost price. That service was very fully utilised and over 57,000 vats of cheese ■Were tested during the season.Such' work involved- additional outlay and demanded extra space and staff. The use of another , room in the ■ present laboratory building' was secured from the Education Department and , equipped for the new work. Two members of the original laboratory staff were reinforced by four additional members who were specially trained to perform limited sections of the analysis,

By the use of special labour-saving devices, including the most modern, rapid weighing telescopic balances, the work was so organised that in the flush of the season ovbr 2600 samples were analysed in one week. For 29 consecutive weeks the total was never less than 1000, and for six of these weeks was over 2000 per week.. Errors in calculations were eliminated by the use of calculating tables when evolving the percentages of mriistufe and of. fat in the dry matter of the. cheese. • .■ .

The total expense involved in equipping and organising the staff must have been considerably less than if each company had been forced to provide its own worker and equip him with the necessary ovens and testing gear.. By keeping a central staff continuously employed with the ibest labour saving equipment, the saving in wages alone to the industry must ; have ‘ been considerable without considering the capital cost. CHECK ON .ACCURACY., Throughout the year continuous checks had been kept upon the accuracy of the cheese analyses. Occasional anomalies and errors might have crept in, biit, after allowing for the possibilities of confusion of labels or samples, transposition of bottles during carriage and other influences beyond control, the proportion of error in the huge total must have been remarkably small. . Mr. Veale was aware that occasionally samples submitted had been analysed also by Other institutions and discrepancies observed. One could not expect individual plugs out of the same cheese to give identical results, and according to a bulletin published by Dr. McDowall of the Dairy Research Institute, a variation as great as 4.5 per cent. of fat in the dry matter might be encountered between two plugs out of one cheese. Natural variations up to that theoretical limit probably explained the majority of discrepancies observed. Mr. Veale was able to report that every care had been taken to ensure the accuracy of their results. Apart from the fact that they used the finest and most accurate of modern equipment, better probably, than that in use anywhere else in New Zealand for a similar purpose, continuous checks had been made by alternative analytical methods. In’ that respect the federation laboratory held an advantage over practically everyone else with whose work its own might have been compared, in that the federation had been able to use stand-' aid analytical methods in the hands of different workers, and thus check the accuracy of the routine methods in use in its own laboratory and elsewhere. Such checks had been continuously employed and arising out of the knowledge thus gained, a valuable report upon routine and analytical determinations of fat in cheese would be prepared for publication*