Smith Dairy Products Co., Orrville, Ohio, is offering home cooks the chance to win cash prizes in its Smith’s Cash Cow Cottage Cheese Recipe Contest. An independent panel of judges will choose winning recipes that use any variety of Smith’s Cottage Cheese as an ingredient in appetizers or salads, entrees, or desserts.

While the moratorium on meat and milk from cloned animals entering the food chain remains intact, one California processor is taking no chances. Clover Stornetta Farms of Petaluma, says that regardless of FDA’s ultimate decision on the matter, it will not accept milk from clones.

Starbucks is going rBST-free. The world’s largest specialty coffee retailer says it will no longer use dairy products made with the artificial growth hormone at coffeehouses in a number of regions around the country. It is investigating a similar change at stores nationwide.

While most Wisconsin farmers have fewer than 100 cows, a new breed is keeping herds of 2,000, 3,000 even 6,000 cows.

Organic Valley welcomed the University of New Hampshire Organic Dairy Research Farm into its cooperative as a milk supplier and full voting member last month.

Tate & Lyle has formed a new subsidiary to serve the Australian and New Zealand food and beverage industry-Tate & Lyle ANZ Pty Ltd. The new division joins the Global Food Ingredients Group, established in 2005.

The 2007 Dairy Forum attracted more than 625 industry leaders this year, setting an attendance record. IDFA says the event’s success is due in part to the 17 companies that sponsored events and activities during Dairy Forum.

FDA is proposing to allow dairy processors and other food manufacturers to use new label language to promote the health benefits of calcium. Under a proposed new rule, milk cartons, yogurt packages and even some fat-free cheeses could soon display wording to the effect that vitamin D and calcium can reduce the risk of osteoporosis and promote bone health.

Demand for dairy packaging is projected to grow 4.1% annually to $4.3 billion in 2010 according to Dairy Packaging, a new study from The Freedonia Group, Inc., a Cleveland-based industry market research firm.

Larry Halper (right) and Andy Anderson (left) of Cloverland Dairy, Baltimore, appeared with television actress Mariska Hargitay, of Law & Order: SVU, at a Washington D.C. press conference last month to launch the latest MilkPEP campaign, Think About Your Drink.