The checkoff-funded Dairy Foods Research Centers network – created to provide innovative, science-backed solutions related to consumer demand and business needs and trends – is celebrating its 35-year anniversary.
Dairy Management Inc. provides the structure and oversight for more than 20 universities that comprise the network’s six regionally based centers, including in Wisconsin. The system has supported more than 400 dairy industry companies with research-based solutions related to processing, food quality and safety, ingredients and other areas.
Emil Nashed, executive vice president of research and product development for DMI, says U.S. dairy farmers deserve credit for their longtime commitment to funding research through their checkoff.
“Dairy farmers had the foresight 35 years ago to help secure a bright future for the industry by establishing this research network to provide sustainable innovations and solutions based in sound science,” Nashed said. “We have a first-class network filled with passionate people who are working together on industry challenges and launching the dairy industry into new horizons.”
The network’s six centers include:
Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research
California Dairy Innovation Center
Midwest Dairy Foods Research Center
Northeast Dairy Foods Research Center
Southeast Dairy Foods Research Center
Western Center for Dairy Research
While each center functions individually and with its own area of dairy-focused expertise, they come together through regular DMI-led meetings and various other touchpoints during the year.
Innovation and support with artisanal and specialty cheese companies has been a key network success. Specialty cheese production in the 1980s accounted for about 3 percent or less of national cheese production. Today, the U.S. is producing 1.8 billion pounds of artisan/specialty cheese each year and it accounts for more than 13 percent of U.S. cheese production.
The innovation has led to international acclaim. In 2016, Roth® Grand Cru® Surchoix, made by Emmi Roth USA was named overall champion of the 2016 World Championship Cheese Contest. Three years later, a blue cheese from Oregon’s Rogue Creamery became the first American-made product to earn the highest honor at the World Cheese Awards.
John Lucey, who has served as director of the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research for the last 11 of his 22 years with the university, has led cheese innovation that has sparked this explosion.
Lucey said his team has become a go-to resource for cheesemakers of all sizes, from small operations all the way to some of the industry’s largest companies, including Saputo, Foremost, Hilmar, Grande, Bel Brands, Lactalis, Glanbia, Sargento, Great Lakes Cheese and others.
“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,” Lucey said. “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.”
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