Page 69

THIRTY-THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION
try is undoubtedly due to a lack of quality and curing as offered to
the consumer. A conservative estimate placed on the number of
people forced to buy and pay good money for poor cheese each year
would be no less than 2,000,000. These two million are added to the
list each year and without doubt keep down the consumption of cheese
as long as this practicing of deceiving prevails.
The present practice of marketing cheese on a more or less of a
flat basis is driving out of business our best cheese makers. The good
competent maker has no protection against the incompetent cheese
maker. The unscrupulous cheese dealer, who has nothing in mind but
tonnage, is often the direct cause of the indifference in making a
quality of cheese as shown all along the line as well as the primary
cause for the low per capita consumption of cheese through this coun-
try. This is done by marketing questionable quality green cheese
unfit to be eaten.
The capable well meaning cheese maker needs protection. The
only way to give this protection is by tightening up the present license
law. AU licenses to cheese makers should be graded A. B. and C.
according to the ability, fitness and capacity of the maker, the same
as a teacher's, doctor's or engineer's license is awarded.
At present we have too many small cheese factories and more
springing up between each year, all of which is the result of inex-
perienced cheese makers and unthinking dairymen, as well as over-
anxious or unscrupulous cheese buyers. The good cheese maker must
be rewarded not only by placing his cheese in the Fancy grade but
by a substantial differential in the price. The system of making and
marketing Wisconsin's cheese is entirely out of date, as shown by the
results obtained by the Tillamook, Oregon, organization, which was
able to pay its farmers nearly eight cents more per pound of butterfat
for 1923 than the farmers of Wisconsin under the free for all methods,
were able to get.
We are having more competition in the business of cheese making
from year to year. If Wisconsin is to keep abreast in the cheese
business she must wake up and travel the best paved road. By this
we mean to make only a high quality cheese and have it cured in cold
storages not less than forty days. This can be accomplished only by
raising the requirements necessary to get the cheese maker's license
and a law against marketing green cheese.
AU cheese to be graded at the cheese factories by state employed
and state paid men, such expense to be levied against the Wisconsin
-cheese producers. We also need a state law with a $3000 penalty
attached thereto for failure to hold cheese in cold storage curing at
least forty days from the press. AU cheese made in this state car-
ries the Wisconsin label and should not be allowed to leave our state
less than forty dayll from the press. The young, green or unripened
cheese as marketed from Wisconsin at the present time is causing
millions of dollars loss each year.
Sixty capable men could be selected who would be willing to work
for $4,000 per year furnishing their own cars and paying their own
expenses. This would mean an expenditure of $240,000, or 7% cents