IDFA congratulates winning contestants of the 95^th Collegiate Dairy Products Evaluation Contest, held this month in Madison, Wisc. IDFA is a longtime supporter and former host of the contest, which gives students the opportunity to showcase their dairy product evaluation skills and prepare for careers in the industry.

This year, Michael Luethke of the University of Tennessee won first place in the All Products individual undergraduate category, Shanna Pearce of Clemson University earned the second place award and Krista Johnson of South Dakota State University won third place. In the All Products individual graduate student category, Katie Magee of the University of Tennessee won first place and Kelsey Choquette of Iowa State University earned the second place award. Fourteen colleges and universities from the United States and France participated in this year’s contest.

View the complete list of winners here. 

The Dairy Recognition and Education Foundation, overseen by IDFA, offers awards to the winning students who are majoring in dairy processing technology, agri-business or food science and their coach.

Established in 1916 by several universities, the Collegiate Dairy Product Evaluation Contest was initially designed to identify quality defects in dairy products throughout the country. It expanded over the years to recognize those students and dairy product judging teams that had mastered the ability to identify high-quality dairy products.

Students test their sensory abilities against professional judges in six different dairy products: fluid milk, butter, yogurt, cheddar cheese, ice cream and cottage cheese. Dairy industry judges from around the U.S. review eight representative samples of the six different dairy product categories and score each sample based on sensory attributes and the severity of their departure from the ideal. The students are challenged to present scorecards with answers that come as close as possible to the judgments of the experts.

To learn more about the competition, visit www.dairyproductscontest.org.

For more information, contact Neil Moran, IDFA senior vice president of finance, administration and trade show, at nmoran@idfa.org.