The strange happenings of the dairy industry continued last month, as one Washington state company decided to jump out of the milk business, and a neighboring company that has redefined coffee began telling the world that it is actually IN the milk business.

Editor’s Note: Inside Perspective is a new Dairy Foods feature offering guest editorials from leaders of various dairy industry associations, It will appear in this space each month.

Oh, what a simple world it used to be.

Sustainable packaging was a relatively new topic when I first wrote about it for Dairy Foods last year.

Awareness of the potential health benefits of consuming cultured dairy foods containing live bacteria is growing. 

It’s frustrating to hear someone say “trans fats” since there is no such thing.

Despite pleas from nearly every segment of the dairy industry-some simply cautionary, but others marked by dismay and appall-FDA has given the green light to allowing cloned milk and meat into the food chain.

If the headline is vaguely reminiscent of an early 1960s movie filled with comic scenes of cocktail parties, maybe it should be. 

Many of the familiar arguments about rBST were being heard all over again in the Keystone State last month and farm organizations and dairy processors reacted the industry’s rejection of rBST as a viable tool, and its subsequent reverberations.

Consumer groups in California are asking for new legislation restricting food from cloned animals in the wake of a gubernatorial veto of a bill that would have required labeling of such goods.