BUTTER QUALITY

Waikato Independent, Volume XXXIV, Issue 3236, 22 November 1934, Page 8

BUTTER QUALITY

IMPROVEMENT ASSISTS BLENDERS. FARMERS’ UNION CRITICISM. “Quality for quality’s sake,” is the Dairy Commission report’s slogan, observes a criticism by the Auckland Farmers’ Union. Every possible sacrifice for quality. All year round milking is highly commended, daily cream deliveries, great expenses on and off the farms, the uneconomic running of overseas ships and other matters too numerous to mention are recommended, summing up into a vast money total of fresh charges. The Farmers’ Union has not been behind in the pressing for quality, and the consistent improvement in quality of New Zealand dairy products is borne witness in the report. But nothing whatever is said of how this improvement in quality, or the greater improvements aimed at, can be capitalised by the industry. Every recommendation in that direction is turned down. ' Patting butter, which would give a definite market for New Zealand butter, is rejected because Denmark gave up “patting.” But Denmark had a certain market for her butter at Danish, and “patting” was, to a great extent, a superfluity. Making butter specially to compete with Danish is rejected, because some might get into the wrong territory—as if that could not be prevented under the powers of the Board by spe*cial marking, and as if merchants did hot know their own markets. The development of condensed milk making, with the expensive tinning to be

done perhaps elsewhere, is dismissed without real consideration. So is the production of ghee question. The one aim of the Commission appears to be to produce extremely high quality butter and cheese for the blenders. At present the better the butter and cheese New Zealand sends, the worse the qualities that can be mixed there? with and the greater the quantity of inferior butter which will be able to be brought to Britain. Actually, the question of quality is closely connected, through blending, with the importation of poor .’foreign butter into Britain. The Commission frequently regrets that its investigations could not be extended to Britain and neglects to make decisions on comparatively trivial points, but it unhesitatingly plunges on the quality question into the very greatest extremes. Proof of the folly of these extreme views is provided by the. present-day prices of Danish and New Zealand (or other) butters. The/’former,'with' its defined “personal” market is bringing a far greater premium, almost 100 per cent., over the New Zealand article, which ordinarily runs it close, but the New Zealand butter is very near in price to the worst butter on the market, which can be very bad indeed. Whilst improvement in quality is possible and is consistently sought, it should be minor to the acquisition of a distinctive market, and this view is foreign to the Commission’s report.