DAIRY PRODUCE.

Waikato Times, Volume 111, Issue 18653, 3 June 1932, Page 3

DAIRY PRODUCE.

BRITISH MARKET NOTES. SOVIET PRODUCERS’ EARLY BID. EMPIRE BUTTER BEST. (From a Correspondent.) LONDON, April 25. To-day the orowd of people watching from London Bridge ‘the movements of shipping in.the Pool of London was.unusually large and unusually animated. The reason was that the Russians were ' there discharging Soviet butter once more for the English breakfast table. In the bright April sunlight the Soviet steamer Smolny was gaily getting rid of 13,665 casks, while anchored in the stream was her sister ship the Felix Dzerjinsky, which had brought a small consignment of 300, casks—a total of 14,000 casks. This is believed to be the earliest shipment by the Russians in any season since the war, and one can imagine the feelings of the officials of the New Zealand Dairy Produce Board in their office hard by London Bridge at this recrudescence of Russian dumping at a period when butter stocks stand at approximately twice .the amount of last year. Glasgow’s Little “ Swap.” Glasgow has been doing extraordinarily well during recent months in sale-s of New Zealand butter and it was, therefore, particularly appropriate that the new sluice gate for the Arapuni hydro-electric scheme should have been built by Messrs Glenfleld and Kennedy of Kilmarnock, who dispatched the .machinery by the Karamea to-day. In view of the fact that ill a single year the imports of New Zealand butter .through the port of Glasgow have more than .doubled, it must be freely admitted that Scotland has made a generous gesture in this “ swapping" of butter for si Vce gates. The übiquitous Empire Dairy Council was quick to draw attention to this practical example of the value of inter-Empire tFade, and Sir William Way land, M.P., as chairman, telegraphed to the Lord Provost of Glasgow the council’s congratulations on the securing of' the sluice gate order, which happily synchronised with Scotland’s great Empire trade push. “Scottish housewives are standing magnificently by the Empire,’’ concluded Sir William’s message. Butter Marking Order.

The ad hoc committee which was brought into being about two years ago for the purpose of securing a butter marking order under the Merchandise Marks Act, 1926, has been formally disbanded following the .coming Into law of the marking order. The committee were the nominal applicants for the order and they were supported by twenty-five different organisations representing Home and Empire producers, consumers, - distributors and stock breeders. It was a good example of what can be achieved by broad Empire .co-opera-tion. Sir William Wayland, its chairman, in his final report, remarked: “ If, through defects of .adminis-i trati'On or throush the inadequacy of the law as it now stands, the marking order fails to protect the public in its annual purchases of some £50,000,000 wortii of butter, then it seems to me that the Government will have to approach the whole problem of the identification of foods from a new and comprehensive angle in order to ensure that the purchasing public shall havo absolute and unquestionable guarantees as to the nature, substance and origin of the foods they buy.” It was reported that contributions towards t'he costs of obtaining the order had been received from the Australian and New Zealand Dairy Produce Boards, the Irish Free State, the Royal Agricultural Society of England,' the British Dairy Farmers’ Association, the Cattle Socictv, the Ayrshire Cattle Herd Book Society, the National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, and the National Pig Breeders’ Association. “ s4lld Sunshine.”

The New Zealand Dairy produce Board’s representatives in London, in coining the phrase “solid sunshine for the advertising of New Zealand butter in Great Britain, probably built better than they knew the foundations 'of future publicity for thU Empire dairy product. The importance that will ultimately be attached to the dietetic value of grass-fed butter as contrasted with the stall-fed product Is becoming increasingly manifest every day. Sir Bruce Bruce-Porter, the eminent physician, in a letter to the press recently, expounded this subject with clarity and simplicity which cannot fail to be of the greatest value to health authorities and consumers alike. “ There are many properties in fresh food," he wrote," “ which it is impossible to analyse. One of them is life, and it is highly important that the food eaten by children and adults who suffer from a shortage of sunlight .shall contain as much of those live properties as possible. Butter made from the milk of cows which graze on the sunlit pastures of our Dominion's docs undoubtedly contain the properties of life. If the public could be made to real iso the amount of ‘harm done to the nation hy the extent to which white bread, margaiine and tea enter into the dietary of our poorer children, I am sure they would whole-heartedly endorse my view that we should do everything to encourage the importation of dairy produce from our Empire overseas. It is interesting to note that Sir Bruce married the daughter tot an Aucklamfdivine, the late Dr. D. Bruce. It is expected that an important renort on vitamins in butter will shortly be released by Die Medical Research Council, while the subject is likely Jo loom largely in the discussions of he noval Sanitary Congress at Bnghton ,Ms year, where Prof. V. H. Mottram, the eminent dietician, will take a leadi„B part in a .session specially devoted In the subject of the relative values of food.