SYNTHETIC CREAM

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 666, 18 May 1929, Page 27

SYNTHETIC CREAM

MARKET IN ENGLAND HOME FARMERS PROTEST An instance of how the overseas producer is affecting the British cream j industry was given at ihe annual meeting of the Buxton and High Peak Farmers’ Union by the secretary. He said a student from one of the agricultural colleges started a cream factory in Derbyshire. He spent £450 on plant, had his own cows and was making such headway that he had to obtain supplies of milk from neighbouring farmers. There was a growing demand for his cream from finest Derbyshire milk at 16s a gallon. Then suddenly his business began to fall off and upon investigation from the dealers he found they were being supplied with cream at 13s a gallon by a firm who were making up synthetic creams and reconstituting imported stuff and selling it to the public. The British farmer who sold genuine cream was subject to restrictions, but the factories where these foreign cream compounds were made up were under no supervision, and were not visited by inspectors. They were cutting cream prices to such an extent that British farmers who specialised in this branch of the industry could not compete. “Eighty thousand tons of condensed skimmed milk, mainly foreign, is coming into this country every month,’ said the secretary. “It seems a shame that we are producing such good milk and cream in England and that British farmers should have to comply with such rigid restrictions, which seriously handicap them in competing with the foreigner who cuts the prices. “A Bill dealing with synthetic cream has been read a second time in the House, but it has been so chopped about that it will be practically of little use to British agriculture. Tinned milk is not worth the tin that it is put in, and yet the British public buy it because it is cheap and handy.” The 1 meeting protested strongly against the unrestricted importation of foreign cream compounds. SILVER FOX BREEDING THE INDUSTRY IN CANADA Silver fox breeding as a profitable sideline to farming was discussed at York (England). There was a large gathering who were addressed by Mr. W. K. Rodgers, from Prince Edward Island, Canada, who suggested that silver fox breeding would add to the income of farmers in this country, provided they could find a good market for the pelts. The farmers of P.E. Island were the richest per capita of the farmers in Canada. On all the 1,500 farms they would find 50 pairs of silver foxes. The industry began 50 years ago. The first pair sold for £I,OOO, and in 1914 they were selling freely for £5,000 a pair. Afterwards they came down to about £3OO a pair, and it was then that the development of the industry really began. The revenue from the industry to the farmers in Prince Edward , Island each year on the aggregate was about £1,000,000. He was convinced that silver foxes could be raised in England with a Quality of fur equal to those produced in Canada. Personally, he considered that the market would be all right. He could not see why within the next 10 or 15 years this country should not be producing silver foxes in the same proportion as Canada was now producing. EARLY MILK RECORDS TESTS 900 YEARS AGO Mr. R. N. Jones, Superintendent Live Stock Officer for Wales, speaking at the distribution of prizes at the Glamorganshire Milk Recording Society at Cardiff recently, said milk recording was not a new-fangled Idea in Wales. It was carried on in the Principality before the tenth century. The farmers of Wales used to migrate to the hills in summer time. They used to put the milk of their cows In a common churn, and they had to keep a record of it In order to divide the produce of butter and cheese satisfactorily. The cows were turned into untouched pasture and their milk yields measured—not weighed as was the practice today—and the produce of butter and cheese was handed over according to what each cow had yielded on any particular day.

The record was in accordance with what was known as the Venedotian measure, a vessel which was three thumbs across the bottom, six thumbs across the middle, nine thumbs across the top, and nine thumbs diagonally. A. thumb was about an inch, so that the Venedotian measure held about a gallon of milk, and a normal cow was expected to give about two gallons a day. He left it to them as to whether they had advanced very much in milk recording since the tenth century. Three times a day milking was also well known in Wales in the twelfth century, and the month of May was known as the month of three milkings a day.