Toward the end of 2018, I penned a column defending Dairy Foods' coverage of the plant-based dairy-alternative space. The column was in response to reader feedback suggesting such coverage was harming dairy farmers and the dairy processing industry.

Plant-based dairy alternatives are certainly nothing new. Soy "milk" for example, has been available commercially for years and years.

Dairy processors rely heavily on in-house instrumentation to support their in-plant quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) efforts. However, they are not necessarily getting all they could out of that instrumentation.

When the pandemic hit back in March, many consumers started loading up their pantries. That practice has benefitted a number of retail food and nonfood segments.

It's been a year since we last published our annual Dairy 100. To say the 12 months in between have been eventful for the dairy industry would be quite the understatement.

Innovations to consumer-ready dairy products such as yogurt, ice cream and cheese get plenty of attention. Innovations to dairy ingredients? Not so much.

It's a sweet state of affairs for the retail ice cream/sherbet category. Dollar sales jumped 7.6% to $7,298.8 million during the 52 weeks ending May 17, 2020, according to data from Chicago-based market research firm IRI.

In June, Dairy Foods sadly lost its long-time publisher, Tom Imbordino. He died unexpectedly at the age of 59.

My daughter is a third grade teacher in Raleigh, N.C. Her school, like most others across the country, was forced to close amid the coronavirus pandemic.