A significant number of kids and families don’t have adequate access to milk and other dairy foods.

Dairy processors understand that great-tasting, high-quality products are critical to success. But a number of attributes beyond those essentials (and, of course, price) increasingly are driving consumers' purchase decisions.

Industry 4.0 brings together machine learning, the cloud and the internet of things to create smarter solutions for food and beverage processing.

Every few days or so, I come across a dairy industry-related news item that stands out among all the standard PR about acquisitions, plant upgrades, personnel changes, marketing campaigns and regulatory happenings. Whether that news is sad, funny or simply bizarre, it generally is excluded from our regular online coverage.

Investing in technology that extends shelf life by even only five days can have a positive impact on the bottom line.

In a February opinion post on TheHill.com titled "Is Dairy the new tobacco?", Gene Baur, president and cofounder of Farm Sanctuary, suggested the dairy industry has many negatives in common with the tobacco industry.

Quality assurance could — and should — also drive revenue by providing the information allows plant leadership to control costs, improve operational efficiencies and maximize finished product output.

In his President's Breakfast address at this year's Dairy Forum, Michael Dykes, D.V.M., president and CEO of the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA), discussed notable recent industry achievements, as well as opportunities (and challenges) going forward.

Is the most effective way to prove humane treatment and sustainability really through organic dairy?

This past fall, Jim Mulhern, president and CEO of the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), told attendees to NMPF's annual meeting that he remains committed to achieving passage in Congress of the Dairy Pride Act, legislation in the Senate and House that would require FDA "to enforce existing food labeling standards and prevent misbranded plant-based imitators from appropriating federally defined dairy terms on their labels."