Join your colleagues at IDFA's Milk & Cultured Dairy Products Symposium, April 24-26 in Kansas City, Mo., for a dynamic and information-rich event focused on the latest laws, hottest trends and best practices affecting milk and cultured dairy products.
The symposium will kick-off with updates on the Food Safety Modernization Act, what's ahead for 2012 and food safety best practices. Joe Levitt, partner at Hogan & Lovells, will give the keynote address on how food safety programs, inspections, training and recordkeeping will need to change as FSMA regulations are implemented. Experts from Deloitte & Touche, Chestnut Labs, and Dupont Nutrition and Health will round out the first day with discussions on best practices for food safety preventive control plans.
Day two will offer a variety of sessions on consumer trends, including "Chocolate Milk Lessons: Why Children Benefit from Sweetened Milk" and "Formulating Indulgent Flavored Milk." Presenters will explore research results looking at sweetened milk versus reformulated flavored milk and how each affects childhood obesity and weight loss. The sessions also will look at formulas and techniques for making flavored milk more appealing to older kids and adults.
For more cultured tastes, there are two session on Greek yogurt as well as new research on strain-specific culture enumeration by Bob Roberts, Ph.D., from Penn State University. "History of Yogurt – Before and After Greek" and “Greek Yogurt – Novel Processing and Ingredients” will satisfy cravings for information and formulation ideas about the explosion of Greek yogurt in the marketplace and how it's inspiring a new generation of natural and healthy yogurts and fermented products.
Later that day, attendees will help to judge the Most Innovative Milk or Dairy Beverage and Cultured Dairy Product Competition. IDFA invites all attendees to send one entry per company for each contest. Awards will be given for the most innovative cultured dairy product (yogurt, cultured milk, cottage cheese, dip), the most innovative milk or dairy beverage (non-cultured) and the most innovative milk or cultured dairy prototype flavor.
To submit products, please complete and email the contest entry form to Paxton Styles, IDFA meetings coordinator, at pstyles@idfa.org, and he will send entry guidelines and shipment information.