CHEESE PROBLEMS

Hokitika Guardian, 11 September 1931, Page 6

CHEESE PROBLEMS

QUESTION OF MILK TEST

SCIENTIST’S VIEWS. NEW PLYMOUTH, September 8. The abandonment of the standardisation regulations had brought the dairy industry face to face with the ever-rising tat t-est of the milk, said Mr P. 0. Veale, scientist of the Federation ot Taranaki Co-operative Dairy Companies, at the annual meeting yesterday. He had never maintained that good, palatable, marketable cheese could not be made from high-testing milk, he continued, because he knew that much show cheese and privately made farm cheese of excellent quality had been made from milk of high test. He did maintain, however, that good cheese was not being i made in a routine way for export from high testing milk, and never would be under the present system of machine milking, mechanical handling, pasteurisation, and factory practice. If they could not change the farm and Ifactory systems to suit the milk they would have to get back again to the type of milk which once suited the farm and factory practice. In doing so they would' get back to the type of milk from which the high-priced, “English Farmers’ ” and Canadian cheddar cheeses were being made, and would considerably improve their chances of appealing to the tastes of consumers and securing -an advance in price.

Butter-fat was being given away for nothing through the industry committing itself to. high, testing m'lk for cheese making, and that had been done for years, declared Mr Veale. It was all very well for producers to congratulate themselves upon their butter-fat returns and to insist- that: only with high testing cattle could high butter-fat returns per acre be secured, but if they proceeded then to give away from TO to 15 per cent, of this butter-fat in superfatty cheese selling at a lower rate than that of their competitors, what was the use of 'their splendid butter-fat returns ?

Marketing experience for many years proved that English merchants and consumers would not pay any premium for the extra butter-fat in New Zealand cheese, and, in fact seemed more inclined, to take an opposite course. English prejudice against a so-called “parf-skimmed” cheese had prevented 'New Zealand cheese producers from extracting and sell-tog as butter the surplus butter-fat available, under -standardisation. So, now for the sake of the name “full cream." they would be forced almost to give it away.

Although producers were apt to scorn the old “gallon” system, Mr Veale considered that they were fn precisely the same position to-day with the butter-fat system. Obviously the proper thing to do was to institute a system of payment which would attempt to pay for butterfat according to its cheese-yielding capacity. If justice was to' be done and the industry to be led back along right lines, they'must abandon the democrats fetish that all butter-fat was.of equal value for cheese making, and was to be paid for at a flat rate.