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Perspective:
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The dairy industry’s best idea

John Umhoefer

John Umhoefer is executive director of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association. He contributes this column monthly for Cheese Market News®.

The best collaboration of dairy farmer and dairy processor support, and federal government funds, in the U.S. dairy industry is the Center for Dairy Research (CDR) at the University of Wisconsin.

There are other great partnerships — U.S. Dairy Export Council and the Consortium for Common Food Names come to mind — but CDR trumps them all on its duration, its insightful leadership across decades and its pragmatic approach to solving industry problems, discovering new potential in dairy components and working side by side with dairy manufacturers to turn science into real dairy product wins.

CDR is celebrating its 40th year, and that’s reason enough to call out one of the great examples of dairy industry vision.

Credit Dairy Management Inc. for setting up and supporting the original six dairy research centers around the U.S. and Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin for taking on decades of direct support for CDR programs and staffing.

Their farsighted understanding of the role of product research has transformed the dairy industry in our lifetimes.

Need proof?

• Whey protein — Early CDR research laid the foundation for dairy’s hottest product, with work on optimizing separation of whey proteins via membrane filtration. In the 1990s, CDR led national research on the functionality of whey protein — from foaming, gelation and solubility properties, to optimizing whey protein addition to beverages, nutritional snacks and baked goods.

• Specialty cheese — CDR joined Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association (WCMA) members and Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin in the 1994 formation of the Wisconsin Specialty Cheese Institute, accelerating the state’s advancement in production of value-added cheese. In 1994, the Wisconsin Agricultural Statistics Service reported production of 94.6 million pounds of Wisconsin specialty cheeses; in 2025, that total reached 1.03 billion pounds. Growth of value-added varieties, like the 10x expansion in Feta cheese production in the last 30 years, opened specialty cheesemaking opportunities across the U.S. CDR has been foundational to that boom, providing cheese make recipes, hands-on production support, seminars and trainings, and the now-coveted Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker Program.

• Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker Program — Inspired by CDR’s Jim Path, the Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker Program is a partnership between CDR and Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin. The rigorous education and testing requirements of the program, launched in 1994, have honed the skills of 96 master cheesemakers across the program’s 30 graduating groups. CDR executes the program, leads the industry advisory board, provides the required training workshops, tests the candidates and annually samples products from each Master to assure ongoing product quality.

• Dairy export quality — CDR research has provided methods to preserve high-quality cheese while extending shelf life for export and sale abroad. The center has developed different make and storage techniques for individual cheese varieties — including high-pressure processing, low-temperature refrigeration, new rennets and new cheesemaking technologies — that have added new cheese varieties to export sales.

The throughline is CDR’s consistent mission to bring its research findings to dairy industry manufacturers.

CDR has offered training and solutions at each WCMA annual gathering across the past 40 years. In 1993, our organizations formalized this partnership, joining forces to co-host what was then called the Wisconsin Cheese Industry Conference and is now today’s CheeseCon and CheeseExpo.

2027 CheeseCon will represent the 35th year of this partnership between the center and the nation’s dairy processors.

Throughout that partnership, CDR has embodied the Wisconsin Idea, the guiding principle of the University of Wisconsin system that the research and education at these public institutions should improve the lives of every person in the state.

And if you look beyond our organizations’ joint meetings, and CDR’s full calendar of workshops, seminars and certificate trainings, you’ll find CDR staff jumping into their cars throughout the year to visit dairy processors.

CDR’s famous “house calls” involve solving plant production challenges or quality issues, optimizing existing technology, or describing new ideas and methods to add value to dairy products and milk producers’ milk checks.

Credit CDR Directors Dr. Norm Olson, Dr. Rusty Bishop and Dr. John Lucey for their consistent execution of this focus on information transfer. And no tribute to CDR is complete without mentioning cheese expert Dr. Mark Johnson.

Best of all, CDR’s opportunity to support the dairy industry has never been better. The completion of the world-class CDR research facility in 2023 has opened new areas of research into cultured dairy products, aseptic packaging, customized cheese curing and even fermentation of dairy byproducts like whey permeate to produce biofuels and biochemicals.

Dairy markets and prices change, but the need for innovation and new ideas is constant. The Center for Dairy Research is dairy’s best collaboration and deserves national support.

CMN

The views expressed by CMN’s guest columnists are their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of Cheese Market News®.

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