NEW ZEALAND BUTTER.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2449, 22 March 1888, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND BUTTER.

Mr Murtiiy, the secretary of the Canterbury Agricultural and Pastoral Association, who lias lately returned from a visit to Australia and Tasmania, referring to New Zealand butter in those markets, says :—lt has gained a fearfully bad reputation in Australia. I went to a big store in Melbourne, and the owner told me it was becoming completely unsileable. Some came over good, he said, but the qreater part was very bad. In proof of this, he opened one tin as a sample. There is no need to say from what town it came, but I was forced to confess that it was only fit for cartgrease. Wo are losing the trade, audit is our own fault. There is always_a market for a first-class article, and this merchant assured me that if New Zealand butter could in any way be depended on it would never fail to find a ready sale. But the horribly careless way it is put upon the market by our people is fatal. They have lost all confidence over there in New Zealand butter. They have taken up the butter business at the Auckland freezing works. The milk is bought, weighed, and tested by a lactometer, and separated while the farmer waits, and he takes the thin stuff home to the pigs. They have all the very best appliances, and make the most delicious butter there. In the hope of avoiding expense, they are trying tins made with a special kind of lid. These they are going to seal hermetically, and export the butter. But, altogether, I think I have told you enough to show that we must have the whole thing seriously to heart. Our farmers, and all of us, must put our shoulders to the wheel. We have the climate, the pasture, and the certainty of a sure crop nine years out of ten. If we allow the Australians, with all their difficulties, to beat us through want of teaching and energy and care, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves." Commenting on the above the Canterbury Times says:—"Mr Murphy's experiences in Australia and Tasmania are very interesting to New Zealanders. To our dairy farmers he has said a thing which is positively startling, viz., that New Zealand butter has contrived to get the worst possible name in the Australian market. The warning fact to which Mr Murphy draws our attention is that our butter frequently opens out in the Australian towns like train oil. This he attributes to careless handling, and bad methods. We are all behind in the race, says Mr Murphy. We must teach our people how to make butter by showing them the modern appliances in full work at our great Agricultural and Pastoral Shows. Here is a note which should startle the whole farming community out of the fool's paradise in which the leading belief is that New Zealand is unapproachable in the Australian market. So it literally is sometimes ; not because it is good, but because it bad."