The Timber Taint.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20274, 7 April 1934, Page 12

The Timber Taint .

Butter Packing .

Elimination Can be Made Certain. (Special to the “ Star.*’) WELLINGTON, April 7. the rapid disappearance of New Zealand’s once great supplies of white pine, the ideal timber for butter boxes, the dairy industry has been faced with the problem of securing an alternative. Since the introduction of Swedish pine and Canadian spruce, tjjere have been complaints of tainting, because butter readily absorbs odorous constituents from the wood in which it is packed. One of the most important New Zealand-grown alternatives to white pine is Insignis pine, which is liable to cause deterioration in butter flavour, but experiments by the Dairy Research Institute, Palmerston North, show that any such disabilities can be overcome at a reasonable cost. The treatment of timber for butter boxes is the subject of a special bulletin just issued by the Institute, and this gives particulars of a large number of experiments, both of treatment of the wood, and the use of suitable wrappers for the butter. The whole subject has also been studied in Australia, and the authors of the bulletin express appreciation of the valuable facts thus made available to them. Insignis Pine Experiments. Following the lines suggested by an Australian research worker, the Dairy Research Institute jn New Zealand tested the effect of coating Insignis pine boards with two kinds of solutions, one a mixture of formalin and water, and the other comprising 50 parts of casein, 7.5 parts of borax, and 300 hundred parts of water. The two solutions were sprayed simultaneously from a double-spray gun, and it was found that there was a rapid reaction between the formalin and the casein; in a few seconds the coating set to a jelly which did not sink into the wood, but dried to a hard varnished surface. The wood used was specially chosen to contain both knots and much resinous material, so that the test would be severe. Butter was packed in them, and also in untreated boxes, and it was found that after some time in storage—the experiments were lengthy ' and painstaking—the treated boxes were practically free from smell, though the odour was noticeable in the butter from untreated boxes, varying, however, in a marked degree. The untreated boxes, both air-dried and kiln-dried, showed a very strong woody odour. Lining Materials. It was found in experiments with various types of linings for butter boxes that ordinary parchment lining, so generally used by the New Zealand dairying industry, gives very strong protection from timber taint. With this lining in treated and untreated Insignis pine boxes, timber taint was recorded in only 16 per cent of the examinations, while with aluminium-foil on paper, and single tin-foil on paper, the percentages were 36 and 40 respectively. With untreated timber, the percentages of taint found were: parchment 25, aluminiumfoil 43, tin-foil 49. The institute has in view the extension of these experiments to the packing of butter for export in standard 561 h boxes, made of treated Insignis pine. The success of these experiments is all the more satisfactory for the reason that casein, the main constituent of the timber coating, is a by-product of the dairy industry, and that Insignis pine has been extensively used in afforestation, so that its use for butter boxes would provide an outlet for both Government and privately owned plantations, and would encourage the use of second class country for afforestation.