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FORTY-THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION
Quality cheese will stimulate a market that will give Wisconsin even
greater prestige than it has at the present time. By quality cheese I
mean the product that comes from the corner cheese factory and not
from any other source. The butter market for a long time suffered
because of a substitute, and if today that substitute were universally
used it would react to the disadvantage of creameries in this and other
states.
Oleomargarine was a detriment to the butter industry, and any sub-
stitute, even though it uses a portion of the product turned out by the
individual factory, is a detriment in the long run. It may furnish a
temporary market, but it undermines the quality product which you
cheese makers are striving to uphold.
The cheese industry is different than the butter industry in that
there are just two kinds of butter. There is good butter and bad but-
ter, and the bad eliminates itself from competition, for on one wants it.
When it comes to the question of cheese, these are not the only fac-
tors. Besides high and low quality cheese there is the matter of taste.
What may please one consumer does not please another. Some want
aged cheese, some want a strong cheese, so you can see that one of
the big factors is taste. The only reason that the substitute for cheese
gets anywhere is because a certain texture is maintained and you can
buy the processors' product twelve months in the year without any
noticeable variation.
However, the fact remains that you never get a palatable and a
nourishing sample of cheese unless it is the natural product. You can-
not expect that the National Cheese Institute dominated by the proces-
sors who constitute the majority of the board, is going to defend the
corner cheese factory. They are concerned with putting upon the
shelves process cheese. The individual factory owner and the patrons
might as well make up their minds now that the National Dairy and
Borden are out to undermine natural cheese, and they are supplanting
it with the process article whenever opportunity affords. If you are
going to play favorites with the National Dairy and Borden you will
have about as much chance as an individual competing with a gambler
using loaded dice.
We have had many a valuable lesson taught us during this depres-
sion, and the main one is that the product which satisfies the customer
is the one that is going to endure. I would suggest that in every
county the patrons of the cheese factory and the cheese makers or-
ganize and contact the hotel people to the end that the product of that
community is served in the hotels. I have been in many hotels the last
year, and in a great number of them the substitute for natural cheese
is served as part of the menu. Here we are overlooking a bet in the
local community.
If we had to face the same situation that the creameries faced in
making their fight on oleomargarine things would be different, but the
fact that patrons of a factory have an outlet for some of their sur-
plus cheese allows them, many times, to close their eyes to the fact
that the substitute is replacing natural cheese.