#5 in September

Checkoff-Funded Research Centers Spark Dairy Innovation

Fast forward to today and the U.S. is producing about 1.6 billion pounds of artisan/specialty cheese annually. It has especially taken off in Wisconsin where our skilled cheesemakers account for about half of that total.

A crowning moment happened in 2019 when a blue cheese from Oregon’s Rogue Creamery became the first American-made product to earn the highest honor at the World Cheese Awards in Italy. We also are proud that Roth® Grand Cru® Surchoix, made by Emmi Roth USA, was named overall champion of the 2016 World Championship Cheese Contest held in Wisconsin.

So, what exactly happened to spur artisan/specialty cheese?

Research-based innovation fueled by America’s dairy farmers.

The Dairy Foods Research Centers network is the engine behind so much of the progress the U.S. dairy industry has made to innovate and meet consumer demand and respond to trends. Or, as I like to say, we fix problems or challenges that are put in front of us.

The team at Dairy Management Inc. (DMI) provides the structure for 20 universities to function on dairy-focused research across six centers:

• California Dairy Products Technology Center
• Midwest Dairy Foods Research Center
• Northeast Dairy Foods Research Center
• Southeast Dairy Foods Research Center
• Western Center for Dairy Research
• Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research

This is a special year for the network as we are celebrating our 35-year anniversary. But there would not be a celebration if it weren’t for dairy farmers supporting us through their checkoff. I’m not saying universities wouldn’t do any dairy research without the checkoff, but we’d probably only collectively be producing a fraction of what we do now. There wouldn’t be the number of staff, programs and overall commitment to dairy research – plus the development of a future workforce – that a secure source of funding makes possible thanks to checkoff support.

Collaborative spirit

I speak for our entire network when I say how grateful we are to farmers who believe in our vision and have given us the opportunity to pause – just momentarily – and celebrate the collective work we have produced for more than three decades.

The network is unique in that each center brings its own expertise and focus to the table. And while we may live in individual ecosystems, collectively we constitute a broader dairy food system that is filled with many regular interactive moments. DMI arranges monthly meetings but there are so many other touchpoints at conferences or simply picking up the phone to ask a colleague for help.

I have had the honor of being with the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research for 23 years and serving as its director for the last 11. Obviously, cheese innovation is a key focus and we have become a go-to resource for cheesemakers of all sizes. Our team has assisted everyone from the mom-and-pop companies all the way to the nation’s largest players, such as Saputo, Foremost, Hilmar, Grande, Bel Brands, Lactalis, Glanbia, Sargento, Great Lakes Cheese and others. We probably serve close to 200 companies with the network overall accounting for about 400 touchpoints.

Like farmers, these companies believe in our mission and came to the table with gift funding when we unveiled plans to update our facilities. Thanks to these industry efforts, we now conduct research in a world-class facility here in Madison.

Sharing research

The purpose of our network’s research is to share it back out with dairy companies. We do this through workshops, individual training sessions, plant visits and other engagement opportunities.

At our lab, we focus a lot on cheese’s functionality, which is the ability to incorporate it into a variety of purposes by changing the ways it melts, stretches, the rate at which it might burn and even its color. The mastery of this research has been transmitted to manufacturers and it has resulted in cheese successfully being used well beyond pizza and into pasta products, baked goods, frozen food, hors d’oeuvres and many other delicious applications.

Some other notable network contributions have come with assisting the mission of the checkoff’s U.S. Dairy Export Council to drive sales internationally by leveraging our technical expertise, as well as assisting companies who sell products overseas.

To successfully secure access, you first must understand the many nuances that exist to get dairy into this marketplace. Some network-led research has focused on technical aspects of exports, such as reducing spores in powdered milk products. We’ve also performed research on extended shelf life so cheese products that reach the far ends of the globe maintain their appeal. There also are many considerations to adapt dairy foods to meet different palates, uses and customs that exist in other countries.

The network’s highlight reel, of course, is founded on the work we did to take whey – once a discarded byproduct that was fed to pigs or spread on fields – and convert it into the global $10 billion industry that whey protein has become.

I’m proud of these accomplishments and many more across our network. I’m mostly proud because I know we are helping farmers. Our success happens because of them, and we are keenly aware of the declining number of dairies we see each year.

Our hope is that our research-led innovations can help secure a stronger future for them and the generations that follow.

To learn more about your national dairy checkoff, visit www.USDairy.com or send a request to join our Facebook group. To reach us directly, send an email to TalkToTheCheckoff@dairy.org.