MILK GRADING FOR CHEESE.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 March 1932, Page 12

MILK GRADING FOR CHEESE.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —I have read with interest your leader re dairy research in Saturday’s issue, and cannot understand why you, who have so worthily championed the farmer’s lot in the past, shoud adopt a ‘'wait and see’ attitude. The only conclusion I can come to is that maybe you do not realise what these proposed regulations re grading of milk for cheese-making mean to us farmers. I have previously pointed out in your columns how one day’s grading is to affect the balance of the test "period. Now, to bring things a bit nearer home, how would you welcome the prospect of, say, one copy of your daily issue of the News to become soiled, and through that your whole issue for the day, and even for the whole week, to he paid for at, say, one halfpenny per copy less? Not a very cheerful prospect, eh! Well, that is just exactly how we cockies will be if we don’t look out. It is all very well to say “wait and see,” but what is the use of crying after the damage is done. We have had a pretty bitter experience lately in the Control Board and later still the standardisation fiasco. No doubt you know that the milk is to be graded on the senses, i.e., the nose, and also the curd test. Take the senses first, as a rough and ready method it might pass,, but I maintain the human element is always open to error. There are cases all over the country of men supplying cream who mix their morning’s and night’s cream into one can, stir the lot and halve it into tw-o cans, and when the grade note comes along one is frequently graded lower than the other. Now for the curd test. Are you aware that it is possible for two samples, to be taken from one can, under identical conditions, and on the test being applied one to be of inferior quality to the other? On a haphazard method as above it is proposed to sample one day’s milk, and on that result to grade a period’s milk. To my mind this is a most unfair and unjust method. If we must be fined (that is what it amounts to) let it be for the day concerned and ho others.. Another thing, would it not be a fair thing for us suppliers to cheese factories to have a vote on this very important question—not an N.D.A. conference affair, but something after this fashion: That every cheese factory manager, Chairman or secretary be responsible for gathering written votes from his suppliers, and these be forwarded to a central authority , for counting purposes. This method would ensure votes from those notoriously pen shy edekies, and eliminate non-producers’ votes. I realise that up to the end of this season the department 'is more or less playing with this question, and I maintain that now is the time when any helpful criticism should be welcomed by the Dairy Division. It is for them to find out a test for quality which must be 100 per cent, correct, and absolutely fair and just. When that is found I think that on a vote the farmers will back the division to a man. but until then I maintain it would be well to leave well alone. I trust that with the foregoing remarks, you will see that now is not the time for any-Asquithian policies.—l am, etc., H L.H. Oakura, March 6, 1932.