ITH butter selling at from forty to fifty cents a pound in the fall of 1918, and when one considers that from three to four pounds of this high-priced commodity can be manufactured from one thousand pounds of whey, it is a matter that should receive the utmost attention of all of those interested in the cheese trade. There is a serious leak right here in the cheese business.
       Imagine a factory of seventy-five tons capacity wasting in this by-product $2,400 a season; in other words, almost $32 wasted after each ton of cheese is made. Could any other business succeed under such conditions? Is it possible that any man with average intelligence would attempt to argue in favor of this wastage?
       Just think that in Ontario, with nearly nine hundred cheese factories, there is being wasted annually about 4,500,000 pounds of butter. The patron of the cheese factory has largely misunderstood the proposition of skimming the whey. His greatest fear has been that the feeding qualities of the whey that has been skimmed was very poor. As a matter of fact, the feeding value is but slightly deteriorated by the process.
       The great feeding value of whey lies in its sugar ingredients, of which there are about five pounds in every hundred pounds of whey, and it is said by those who know something about animal husbandry, that one pound of milk sugar will put as much fat on a hog as one pound of butter fat. The small amount of fat removed amounts to but very little to the majority of patrons, and besides it is too expensive a food for hogs. It is certainly not good economy to feed butter fat at forty or forty-five cents a pound in order to produce the same, or lesser quantity of pork, which is only worth eighteen or nineteen cents a pound;
       Under usual conditions of the cheese factories, all the fat in the whey does not reach the hog, because it rises to the surface of the tank and the whey is drawn from the bottom. Then again a large percentage sticks to every receptacle used in handling it, which is lost. The fat in non-skimmed whey rises to the surface of the whey tank, cools and drys out, so that it will not mix in with the rest of the whey, and it then becomes rancid, and is not only worthless food for man or beast, but becomes a source of infection for undesirable bacteria, which find their way into the milk through the medium of the can.
       A mistaken impression prevails in regard to whey butter, some thinking that it is not as good as other butter. Now nothing could be further from the truth. Whey butter made under equally favorable conditions as other butter is its equal except that its texture will not stand the heat as well.