MOISTURE IN BUTTER.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 453, 3 April 1912, Page 3

MOISTURE IN BUTTER.

DAIRY COMPANY FINED. A charge of selling butter which contained moisture in excesa of the amount permitted by law, was brought against Henry Havelock Meredith, manager of the Helensville Dairy Company, who appeared at the Police Court, Helensville, last week. Analysis had shown that the butter in question contained over 17 per cent, of water, while the regulations require that there shall not be more than 16 per cent. Mr Selwyn Mays, who appeared on behalf of the Department of Agriculture, explained that all the dairy factories in the country had been circularised by the department, and their attention had been drawn to the fact that complaints had been received from London regarding excessive moisture in New Zealand butter, he said, further, that in January last, prior to the issue of the circular, the defendant company had been notified of the same defect in a portion of their output, and on that occasion had withdrawn a portion of a consignment intended for export. Mr Meredith explained that the offence was entirely the result of inadvertence, and as occasioned by carelessness on the part of hia butter maker in not regulating with sufficient nicety the temperature of the cream. A mistake in this direction was often very difficult to avoid. Mis Worship said that lie would not accept such an explanation as a sufficient excuse, 'especially as the company had been previously warned. It was most essential that this tault in butter making should be eradicated, in view of the lurco competition which the New Zealand product had to face in the. Home markets. It was necessary to impose a penalty which would servo as a warning to others._ A fine of ,£o and costs 2Ss, was in--11 i c t e d.