I would like to mention this question about getting rid of soiled butter. There will be soiled butter, either in transit or at the dairy, and the question is, what is to become of it? Sub-section (2) states that a person shall be found guilty of keeping dirty butter unless he can show to the satisfaction of the court that such butter was not intended to be blended, re-worked, or otherwise treated, or to be used for manufacturing purposes, and was not intended to be exported, or consigned for export, and was also not intended to be sold, or offered, or consigned for sale. That may be bad butter, but it may be re-sold out of the dairy. If the Minister could give us a line as to how that could be treated it would be useful. It may not be sold in accordance with (c). It would be a little difficult if a man could not get rid of it, not, of course, to sell it as human food, but as a marketable thing.
SECTION 34.
I think Deputy Beamish is right. Butter, for instance, may fall off the table in the factory and, say, of ten ounces two may get dirty, but the rest would be all right. That may, perhaps, happen a good many times in a year and the scrapings will amount to something either as oil or fat. I will insert the words there " sold as butter." The factory people have suggested that and are satisfied with it.
I would like to find out the mind of the Ministry regarding the term " dirty butter." Is it to be left to the discretion of the inspector, and is there to be an appeal from him? " Dirty " to the man in the street has quite a different meaning to " dirty " in the mind of the bacteriologist or to the analyst. It seems to me that a little more definition would be required unless you say distinctly that the inspector or arbitrator will be the person to decide finally whether butter is dirty or not. We all may have our notion of what is dirty but the analyst and chemist would have a very much broader view of what was dirty. What is dirty to the eye is one thing, and what is dirty from the point of view of chemicals or microscopic analysis is another thing. I suggest that a little more definition is required as to the meaning of " dirty."
An inspector who is called on to inspect butter is, I think, a reasonable arbitrator as to what is clean and what is dirty. I do not suppose he would bisect the dirt. He is not likely to condemn bona fide butter unfairly. I think it is better to leave the matter in his hands, otherwise he is not fit for his job.
There is a point which I do not think is covered. As the section stands, it would be possible to sell dirty butter not under the term " butter," but, say, to a biscuit factory. I am not sure whether it is advisable or otherwise but by calling dirty butter " grease " it could be sold to a biscuit factory and sold as food.
Deputy Johnson points out that one man may think dirty butter is one thing and another may think it is another thing. If you had bits of coal, for instance, in butter it may be dirty from one point of view, but clean from another.
This Part 5 and the preceding section try to deal with the production of clean butter, bacteriologically as well as visibly. In this Bill we are dealing with ordinary shopkeepers who sell butter and the intention, as regards this point, is dirty to the eye.
With regard to Deputy Heffernan's point, you will find in a butter factory butter that is visibly dirty. It has fallen perhaps on the ground. The dirty part scraped off, such butter may amount to a half of ton of butter in the year. If properly treated you could get perfectly clean butter fat out of these scrapings, and that certainly could be sold as grease for biscuits and other purposes. The whole point is that you can hardly force people to throw away valuable butter fat.
I do not suggest that you should. It could be used, for instance, for car grease, but not, I say, for human consumption. Supposing, for instance, that a dead rat fell into butter and got mixed up with it, that butter, of course, would be dirty butter, but I am sure it will be agreed that it would not be desirable to use dirty butter of that kind in a biscuit factory.