THE BUTTER INDUSTRY.

Waipa Post, Volume V, Issue 213, 16 May 1913, Page 4

THE BUTTER INDUSTRY.

HOME SEPARATION CONDEMNED,

A. business man well known in the London produce trade, writing under date March 19 to Mr J. R. Scott, secretary of the South Island Dairy Association, draws a comparison between the prices being realised at Home for Australian and New Zealand cheese. He says: —“Last week the top price for New Zealand salted was I2os, whereas the very choicest Australian could only command I I2s, a difference of 8s per cwt., or nearly id per lb. New Zealand butters have always been handicapped by the Australian butters. With the exception of the output from a few Western district faccories of Victoria, the Australian butters ... go a long way to pulling down the prices —not only of their own best butters, but also of New Zealand. For some unaccountable reason there is a section of those interested in Australian butter who have fought strenuously against having their butter graded; the result is that at times the market is flooded with all kinds of inferior Australian butters which have a detrimental effect upon all colonial butters, and New Zealand in particular. New Zealand butter, as a matter of fact, is in a

class by itself The winter, which has been very open, especially in the South of England, has now taken a change, and instead of getting springweather, we are having a real taste of winter. Snow has fallen, especially in the north ; this may have the effect of keeping up prices longer than otherwise would have been the case.” Commenting on the information contained in the foregoing, a director of a leading butter factory told an Otago Times reporter, that in the opinion of those who ought to know, the inferiority of some Australian butters was in large measure the direct result of home separation. It was with a great amount of fear for the future of the industry in New Zealand, too, that he had noticed a growing tendency to follow the example set by the Australian farmers, and to go in for home separation. He considered that by following this practice great harm would be done to the future of the butter industry in the Dominion.