THE TRICKS OF THE TRADE

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8169, 27 June 1906, Page 3

THE TRICKS OF THE TRADE

./-BUTTER FAKES AN|) MUTTON $ FRAUDS^ HOW NEW ZEALAND PRODUCE SUFFERS Some interesting and significant instances of the fraud that is practised in various forma in the sole of New Zealand produoe have come under my notice in the last week or two, says a London correspondent. A gentleman reoently arrived from the oolony noticed a consignment of New Zealand butter at a little wayside station in Dorset, and on inquiry be learnt that the consiguee 'was a grocer in a neighbouring fowa, whose custom it was to drive over in hiß cart at night, remove his New Zealand butter from the wayairJo Btation to bis town shop, and there V sell it aa fresh New Zealand butter, / of course at a better price than it """■- would otherwise have realised. An other New Zealander, also writing from Dorset, tells me of an instance he came across where margarine had been placed in New Zealand boxes, and sold as colonial butter. Unfortunately this sort of thing goeeon all over the country, and it seems impossible to preveufc it. It is just the same in the meat trade. Some butchers are making their fortune hy selling colonial mutton as high grcda English or Scotch, and sometimes they vary the process by stripping the coverings off the colonial carcases, putting them on to oheap English ones, and selling the latter as prime New Zealand. Prosecutions only have the effect of making the other tricksters more cautious in their methods of deceit. Nor is trickery confined to the butter and meat l trades, it is equally rife, from all ' aooounts, amongst the dealers in wool, in silk, in alcoholic liquors, and other lines. It is enough to raise a.doubt as to whether the customer, ever gets what be asks for—and pays for. Truly peace has her trickeries no less renowned than war's! "It Is queer," says a New Zealander who, after a long spell of farming in varous parts of the colony, is .now visiting this country, "it ia queer to see how fraud is so much mixed up nowadays with the prgduce trade. The faking of butter, especially is carried on in a marvellous fashion. I rather fancy myself aa a judge of good butter, but I was badly taken in the other day. Eating bread and butter as I thought, and good butter at that, I found out afterwards it was margarine. "We get first-class frozen mutton from a butcher who has just opened a shop in our village. On the opening day 1 went into the shop and asked them what they were selling. "Prime Canterbury," was the reply, so I asked to see the brand, knowing well that each carcase has an abattoir ticket. ' They produced a ticket of a freezing company in New South Wales! It was good mutton enongb, but not Canterbury. In his case the salesman was ignorant that N.S.W. company,was j as far. away from Canterbury as we are from New York. "I waß three year sin Ashburton j district, eight years in Hawke's Bay, and eleven years on the West Coast of the North Island, so I know a bit abont mutton The average well-to-do man down here is very conservative, and loyally sticks to his Dorset mutton, but to my taste English mutton is too strong with so much artificial feed. Some of the people! around here, seeing the meat we send them from New Zealand,, are beginning to realise that forequarters at 5d and binds at fid make a considerable difference in the butohers's bill as compared with lOd and: Is for English mutton, and bad English at that; fori particular- , ly notice in local shops the. prime wether hanging up is not cut up, but ia sent to London (all good stuff goes there), and what the .country eats is old ewe. Another little fraud !■.;.: "Butchers don't believe me when. I tell them no single carcase of mutton, leaves the abattoirs in New Zealand without Government inspection, and that butter is similarly inspected. The meat and butter we send Home from the colony are the purest food to be had that 1 know of.'* .