14 



OUR IMPORTS OF DAIRY PRODUCE. 



Our aggregate imports of all kinds of dairy produce in the 

 past year were valued at nearly £24,000,000, including 

 £15,344,000 for butter, £2,500,000 for margarine, £4,900,000 

 for cheese, and £1,178,000 for condensed and fresh milk and 

 cream. Twenty years ago the value of our receipts of these 

 products, omitting milk and cream, amounted in the twelve 

 months to about £13,956,000, of which £9,718,000 was for 

 butter and butterine, and £4,238,000 for cheese. Thus, 

 between 1876 and 1896 the estimated expenditure of the 

 United Kingdom in the purchase of manufactured products of 

 foreign and colonial dairies, and of margarine, has increased 

 by about £10,000,000. During the same interval, the aggre- 

 gate annual importation of these articles has nearly 

 doubled, viz., from 3,191,000 cwts. to over 6,208,000 

 cwts., the greater part of the difference having been 

 credited to butter and margarine, the entries of which 

 have risen from 1,659,000 cwts. to 3,900,000 cwts. 

 whereas those of cheese have risen from 1,531,000 cwts. to 

 2,245,000 cwts. In other words, the volume of foreign and 

 colonial milk imported into this country in the form of butter, 

 cheese, and margarine (reckoning a pound of margarine as 

 being equivalent to a pound of butter) has expanded from 682 

 millions of gallons in the earlier year mentioned to 1,453 

 lions of gallons in 1896. If these figures are applied to the 

 declared values of the articles concerned, it would appear that 

 the milk received last year in the form of butter was valued at 

 nearly 4d. per gallon, while that received in the shape of 

 cheese was of the estimated value of nearly 4|d. per gallon. 



Hitherto we have been dealing w 7 ith the gross imports, and 

 although the exportation of dairy produce from our shores is 

 •of comparatively insignificant dimensions, a more accurate 

 appreciation of the extent of the consumption in this 

 country of foreign and colonial milk products and of 



