INVESTIGATION OF BLEACHING AND DISCOLORATION IN CHEESE.

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume 42, Issue 4, 20 April 1931, Page 275

INVESTIGATION OF BLEACHING AND DISCOLORATION IN CHEESE.

In the course of his work in connection with dairy-factory difficulties coming under the notice of the Dairy instruction staff, Mr. G. F. V. Morgan, Dairy Bacteriologist to the Department of Agriculture, has found what appears to be a very evident cause of much of the bleaching and much of the dark discoloration which are met with from time to time in New Zealand cheese. His work indicates that this bleaching and discoloration, which are due to the presence of mould, are rendered serious through the mould being enabled to develop and extend in and around cracks or boreholes in the cheese, in which oxygen derived from the air is present.

The matter requires further and more extended investigation in order to fully confirm these opinions, and it has been communicated to the Dairy Research Institute, at Palmerston North, with which Mr. Morgan works in co-operation, where no doubt this will be carried out. Meanwhile, all dairy companies possessing cheesemaking plants have been advised as to precautions necessary to be taken in order to prevent mould contamination of the body of cheese.

Good, Example of Silage Utilization. Fields Instructor at Rotorua reports that a Putaruru farmer, who. has a holding of 80 acres and milks thirty cows with an average butterfat production of slightly, under 300 lb. per cow, last season wintered seventy head of stock and purchased seventy hoggets in July. He did not save any hay, and his herd was fed on silage alone up to the end of July, when he commenced feeding swedes. . Silage feeding was continued during spring, and the stock came through in excellent condition. ' •