STANDARDISED CHEESE.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 February 1931, Page 6

STANDARDISED CHEESE.

The definite recommendation of the food products committee of the Empire Marketing Board that the manufacture of ■‘standardised” cheese in New Zealand should be discontinued must have the serious consideration of everyone interested in the dairy industry. The board’s first duty is to foster intra-Empire trade, and its services are offered freely in various directions to that end. As the committee points out, the board is at present assisting to finance research into cheese manufacture now being undertaken at Massey College. The committee is non-political and non-partisan in a commercial sense. It sees the benefit of its propaganda and other assistance utterly undone by what it considers a mistaken policy of the New Zealand manutacturer, and it has now said so quite plainly. The board’s opinion is but a further confirmation that expressed by the chairman of the New Zealand Dairy Produce Board, Mr. lorns, and by many quite dispassionate inquirers who have looked into matters on tlie spot. The question that still requires an answer is what the Department of Agriculture proposes to do in the face of the Empire Marketing Board’s advice. So far the Dairy Division’s regulations seem to be an effort to please conflicting interests. Their effect upon the trazle in Great Britain is evidently not what was hoped for, and in such circumstances the sooner they are withdrawn tlie better. The product New Zealand must export is the product the British consumer desires, and not the one manufacturers here think he ought to desire. If the Dominion will not recognise this; if, indeed, it will not make it clear on every possible occasion that such is the guiding principle of manufacturers here, then the collapse of its greatest industry will be only a matter of time.