QUALITY OF BUTTER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 August 1941, Page 6

QUALITY OF BUTTER

PLACED ON LOCAL MARKET. STATEMENT BY MINISTER. IBy Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. In an interview, the Minister of Agriculture (Mr Barclay) commented on statements suggesting that there was widespread dissatisfaction with the quality of the butter being placed on the local market, and which was patted through the Internal Marketing Department. Mr Barclay said no butter which was graded below first grade was allowed on the market, and it was therefore quite untrue to state that inferior butters were being marketed as first or finest. At the present time of the year there was not a sufficient quantity of first-grade freshly-made butter available io supply the local market, and the balance had to be made up from withdrawals from the export freezer stock. It'had been found over a period of years that certain quantities of butter withdrawn from the freezer at this time of the season and graded as first or finest, revealed a tendency to deteriorate slightly after patting. Agricultural scientists were making every effort to overcome this difficulty. The Minister emphasised that this tendency was quite beyond the control of the Internal Marketing Division, and that the variation in the quality of butter now being placed on the local market was of a strictly limited and temporary nature, and that in the main the local market was supplied with the best quality butter produced by the industry.