230 THE BUTTER INDUSTRY IN UNITED STATES [454 



butter oil is then re-churned with fresh milk or cream to 

 give it a fresh butter flavor. 1 This is " renovating " or 

 " processing " butter. Numerous processes for removing 

 the rancidity from butter were tried and some were success- 

 fully used some time before 1886. The early methods con- 

 sisted in washing the butter with water alone, or with water 

 containing minute amounts of alkali. 2 In the chapter deal- 

 ing with the grading of butter it was seen that as early as 

 1886 renovated or process butter was officially included 

 among the classes of butter by the New York Mercantile 

 Exchange, and that they defined renovated butter as butter 

 made by melting, etc. In the administration of the oleo- 

 margarine law the U. S. Internal Revenue Commissioner 

 encountered many samples of renovated butter during the 

 year, 1887. 3 Analyses showed that chemicals were used 

 to destroy the rancidity of old butter. Major Henry E. 

 Alvord of the U. S. Department of Agriculture called at- 

 tention to the enormous manufacture and sale of renovated 

 butter in 1898 before the National Association of the State 

 Dairy and Food Departments held in Harrisburg, Pa. Few, 

 if any, state laws at that time covered renovated butter. 

 The Dairy and Food Commissioner of Michigan, in his re- 

 port of 1879, says, " One can scarcely conceive how the ill- 

 made and spoiled country butters, after lying for weeks in 

 the hot store rooms of country merchants and becoming 

 positively nauseating, can be worked over and made suffi- 

 ciently deceiving as to be sold for creamery butter. The 

 fact remains that this is done, and in Michigan at least tons 

 of this worked over, renovated butter is annually sold under 



1 H. C. Sherman, Food Products, p. 377. 



1 Annual Report of the New York State Dairy Commissioner for 

 r886, p. 181. 

 * Report of Internal Revenue Commissioner for 1887, p. cxlii. 



