OUR BUTTER IN ENGLAND

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5115, 15 April 1927, Page 4

OUR BUTTER IN ENGLAND

IDENTITY LOST IN BLENDING.

FACTORY MANAGER’S STATEMENT

Amongst the guests at the annual i e-union of the 1 Waikino Old Boys Association were Messrs F. S. Boaid, manager of the Te Aroha Dairy Company, and C. Harris, farmer, of Waitawheta Valley, both comparatively recent arrivals from the Old Country. They figured on the. list to respond to the toast of the farming industry, and in the course of his remarks Mr Harris, after intimating that a few years ago he had been in farming in the Old Country, proceeded to give his experience of how imported butter was handled in England after reaching its destination. He said he feared from what he saw at the Chard butter factory in Somerset, to which he and other suppliers had been invited to participate in an inspection, that overseas butters lost their identity, whereas the producers, to create a market wanted it sold under its own name. Butter from the Dominions was blended with the English product and sold as English butter which, in his opinion, was not good for either England or the Dominions.

Mr Board, in the course of his reply, remarked that it was a curious coincidence that he was the manager of the works to which Mr Harris had referred, and, still more curious, although then personally unknown to each other, the incident related by Mr Harris had occurred on one of those occasions when the annual gathering of suppliers topk place at the Chard Junction works, Somerset. Mr Board went on to say that Mr Harris, in recounting his experiences of what he saw when visiting these works, had however, unwittingly conveyed a somewhat wrong impression with regard to the blending and packing of butters. Good and bad were not mixed indiscriminately, the procedure being to classify the different butters received from the various expoiting countries and then to blend according to quality. The butters were plainly labelled finest fresh butter, guaranteed absolutely pure. There was nothing to indicate that the butter was the produce of West of England firms; neither was there any attempt to convey this idea to the consumers.

Coming to his close intimacy with dairy produce, the speaker said that fiis grandfather had built the first butter factory in. England, after which his uncles carried on the business. Under their control it grew to large dimensions, both in London and in the west of England. Then followed the control of the, business by his cousins, and his brothers and himself afterwards took up the running; he managing the works from 1914 to 1920. He had been brought up in an atmosphere of patriotism to the colonies, and his people had ever done their utmost to advance the interests of their colonial clients. The procedure followed in the past had, perhaps, hidden the identity of New Zealand butter, but the people at Home were to-day only awaiting the opportunity to assist farmers in their aspirations to place their dairy produce on the English market as the produce of this Dominion.—Waihi Telegraph. o - —