5. These regulations shall come into operation on the 1st of September
1901.
6. These regulations may be cited as the Sale of Milk Regulations
1901.
In July 1901 another departmental committee was appointed by the board
of agriculture to inquire and report as to what regulations, if any,
might with advantage be made under section 4 of the Sale of Food and
Drugs Act 1899, for determining what deficiency in any of the normal
constituents of butter, or what addition of extraneous matter, or
proportion of water in any sample of butter should, for the purpose of
the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts, raise a presumption, until the contrary
is proved, that the butter is not genuine. As bearing upon this point
reference may be made to a report of the dairy division of the United
States department of agriculture on experimental exports of butter, in
the appendix to which are recorded the results of the analyses of many
samples of butter of varied origin. First, as to American butters, 19
samples were analysed in Wisconsin, 17 in Iowa, 5 in Minnesota and 2 in
Vermont, at the respective experiment stations of the states named. The
amount of moisture throughout was low, and the quantity of fat
correspondingly high. In no case was there more than 15% of water, and
only 4 samples contained more than 14%. On the other hand, 11 samples
had less than 10%, the lowest being a pasteurized butter from Ames,
Iowa, with only 6.72% of water. The average amount of water in the total
43 samples was 11.24%. The fat varies almost inversely as the water,
small quantities of curd and ash having to be allowed for. The largest
quantity of fat was 91.23% in the sample containing only 6.72% of water.
The lowest proportion of fat was 80.18%, whilst the average of all the
samples shows 85.9%, which is regarded as a good market standard. The
curd varied from 0.55 to 1.7%, with an average of 0.98. This small
amount indicates superior keeping qualities. Theoretically there should
be no curd present, but this degree of perfection is never attained in
practice. It was desired to have the butter contain about 2(1/2)% of
salt, but the quantity of ash in the 43 samples ranged from 0.83 to
4.79%, the average being 1.88. Analyses made at Washington of butters
other than American showed a general average of 13.22% of water over 28
samples representing 14 countries. The lowest were 10.25% in a Canadian
butter and 10.38 in an Australian sample. The highest was 19.1% in an
Irish butter, which also contained the remarkably large quantity of
8.28% of salt. Three samples of Danish butter contained 12.65, 14.27 and
15.14% respectively of water. French and Italian unsalted butter
included, the former 15.46 and the latter 14.41% of water, and yet
appeared to be unusually dry. In 7 samples of Irish butters the
percentages of water ranged from 11.48 to 19.1. Of the 28 foreign
butters 15 were found to contain preservatives. All 5 samples from
Australia, the 2 from France, the single ones from Italy, New Zealand,
Argentina, and England, and 4 out of the 7 from Ireland, contained boric
acid.