WCMA Notes: Five Reasons Dairy's Amazing

It may be the festive season, or the pleasing task of contacting the industry winners of our 2025 WCMA Recognition Awards, or even the recent news that Americans have once again set a new record for enjoying cheese: as the U.S. cheese industry enters the second quarter of the 21st century it seems timely to reflect on five reasons this industry is amazing. 

Food Safety 

Safe food production drives all aspects of milk collection, pasteurization, processing, packaging and storage in the dairy industry. Vigilance is essential: contamination by food-borne pathogens does happen, and a legion of quality control personnel, suppliers and partners such as Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, Center for Dairy Research and the Dairy Food Safety Alliance are dedicated to sanitation advances, regulatory partnership and pathogen research. In 2023, according to the Center for Dairy Research dairy recall tracker, the U.S. logged just three minor recalls of natural, pasteurized-milk cheeses.  

In the same year, regulators initiated 12 recalls of contaminated beverage raw milk. Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association remains adamantly opposed to state and federal liberalization of raw milk sales to consumers. 

Consistency and Craftsmanship 

It’s the art of cheesemaking: take fresh-from-the farm milk that naturally varies in composition every day, carefully control fermentation and curd formation, and produce end products that perform day in and day out for a host of customers who each have different performance desires for their resulting cheeses. Few foods face this many variables in production and the cheese industry delivers quality every day of the year.   

Success comes from a cheese industry partnership with equipment and ingredient suppliers focused on engineering technology specific to dairy manufacturing, nonstop quality and sanitation control, and continual R&D among culture and ingredient suppliers. At the manufacturer level, consistency derives from daily product testing, improvements in make procedures, and the training and mentoring of cheesemakers and their teams both inhouse and at extraordinary education institutions like Center for Dairy Research.  

Innovation 

A potato chip is a potato chip, and apple sauce is apple sauce, but the dairy industry seems to advance its offerings every day. Like never before, cheesemakers from artisans to the largest manufacturers are turning out new American original cheeses, new flavors for familiar styles, new convenience cuts and packaging, and entirely new formulations for sales in markets overseas. It’s no surprise that Americans eat more than 42 pounds of cheese per capita when the industry has responded to consumer desires for convenience, snacking, cooking at home and flavor adventures.  

An entire article could cover the continuing pace of innovation in whey protein and milk protein offerings. Consumer interest in increasing intake of effective proteins is growing domestically and overseas. At CheeseCon in April, Dr. John Lucey will describe the migration of innovation even into whey byproducts and wastewater from dairy production, where remaining nutrients and sugars are being eyed for specialized fermentation to produce renewable compounds that make up biofuels and bioplastics.  

Perishability Performance 

Step back and marvel at dairy’s success in handling a nutritious, yet perishable product that is not harvested in a season, but every day of the year. Farmers’ care for dairy cows in all weather and all seasons may be the hardest job in America, and dairy haulers bring every pound of fresh milk produced in a day to manufacturers within hours, chilled and ready for processing. After cheese is packaged, in bulk for storage or ready for retail shelves, key partners in warehousing, procurement and processing, and long-hold curing find a home for every pound produced.  

Consider that this entire cheese industry system has doubled in size, to handle 14.2 billion pounds of annual natural production, in one, 25-year generation.  

Pricing 

All of this performance and growth has succeeded under the weight of an almost impenetrable federal pricing system that contorts itself to discover a free-market value for fresh milk. A new Farm Bill, when Congress finally acts, offers a chance to normalize updates to milk price formulas in federal milk marketing orders during the remaining useful years of this federal pooling and pricing schema. 

The rise of partners and tools for risk management and futures pricing has allowed for stability in managing income and costs, and has contributed to greater lending and modern dairy processing expansion, opening doors to new markets around the globe.  

Behind this extraordinary growth in cheese and dairy are thousands of dairy processing personnel who are extraordinarily interested in collaboration and change, attuned to the value and advancement of each employee, and are aligning to keep dairy a key nutrition source as we sustain our planet’s resources.  Here’s to doubling again in 25 years.