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Significant growth in dairy exports

Allen Sayler, managing partner with the Center for Food Safety and Regulatory Solutions (CFSRS) presenting some interesting export and production numbers to the American Dairy Products Institute Technical Symposium last week.  He notes that in 2003 the U.S. produced 170 billion pounds of milk and exported 9.7 billion pounds.  In 2013 we produced over 201 billion pounds of milk and exported 31.2 billion pounds.  As he put it: Just shy of 70 percent of the milk production growth since 2003 entered the export market.”  Sayler stated: “Economic growth around the world, but especially in developing countries, has increased the demand for food and agricultural commodity trade.”

He added that there are some key global dairy standards being considered of major interest to the U.S. dairy industry.  Among them:

The development of some type of basic standards for processed cheese

The development of standards for whey permeate powder

The development of labeling standards for non-retail containers

A discussion of sustainability and environmental issues

Sayler told the group the U.S. tends to be more reactionary than proactive on these types of discussions and he would like to see the industry get more involved.