09/12/07 Dairy ingredients showing up in new products

When you think of dairy products you generally head for the supermarket dairy case. There's more to it than that. Allan Reed with Dairy Management Inc says ingredients offer dairy producers a wave of new opportunities. REED "Ingredients allow dairy producers to think really well beyond milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream and butter, and into things like nutrition bars, really a wide, wide area of application areas where you wouldn't really think dairy is going to show up." Reed says the dairy checkoff works with food and beverage manufacturers to provide the expertise on using dairy ingredients. REED "It's sort of the next stage of promotion. By partnering with leaders and innovators and helping them to understand how to use dairy ingredients, we ultimately help there to be, better more exciting, more consumer relevant products on the market." California dairy producer Kimberly Clauss says the dairy checkoff strategy has paid off by helping to meet consumer demand. CLAUSS "Unmet demand to me means a future. Because what it is is bridging the gap between currently what we have and what consumers have available to them and what they're going to have available to them in the future." One example is the dairy checkoff's work with Hershey's to develop Payday Pro Bars which require 15 million pounds of milk to obtain 200 thousand pounds of dairy protein. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott