“QUALITY FIRST”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 831, 27 November 1929, Page 10

“QUALITY FIRST”

NEW ZEALAND CHEESE ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT From Our Oicn Correspondent HAMILTON, Today. “It is going to pay us handsomely to stabilise our standardised cheese,” stated Mr. W. M. Singleton, Director of the Dairy Division, to a gathering of cheese manufacturers and company directors at Hamilton yesterday. Mr. Singleton recently returned from a visit to Canada, Great Britain and Denmark. “We must consider quality first and not export some of the inferior quality cheese we have been exporting.” continued Mr. Singleton. “Nothing is going to damage standardised cheese more than the practice of going for quantity before quality.” If an effort was made to produce a better quality cheese the question of openness would look after itself. It would be overcome by practical means, a better milk starter and better manufacture. A new grading scale was wanted in classifying New Zealand cheese. If five points were taken off flavour and five off colour, and added to body and texture, the result would be beneficial to the industry. He would like them to be allotted as follow: —Flavour, 45 points; body, 20; closeness, 20; colour, 10; finish, 5. There were three points he wished the meeting to consider. They were the advisability of changing the schedule of points for the grading of cheese, the advisability of fixing a percentage of salt in exported butter and the desirability of his being relieved of a promise to have the Act amended to allow the export of modified cheese. He had changed his views as a result of his visit overseas, and was firmly convinced that it was a mistake to allow any modified cheese to be exported. Makers in New Zealand showed a tendency to be careless in the matter of firmness of curd. The cheese was much softer, needed more salt and often had an excess of water. Nevertheless, he had not seen any cheese just as uniform as New Zealand cheese, and had not seen anything to make it advisable for New Zealand factories to add more presses. The difference in price between Canadian and New Zealand cheese was due to the fact that the output of the New Zealand article was now much greater than the quantity Canada placed on the market, with the result that New Zealand makers had to find new customers. While New Zealand cheese was standardised, the Canadian article was extensively graded. There was not one Canadian factory which skimmed m**k, and the Canadian maker had no Jersey problem to contend with.

CHICAGO WHEAT MARKET (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) Reed. 10.5 a.in. CHICAGO, Tuesday. Wheat.—December, 1 dollar 22 5-S cents a bushel; March, 1 dollar 30 1-S cents; May, 1 dollar 34 1-S cents; July, 1 dollar 34 h cents.