If you work in the dairy industry, you understand that it is filled with some of the hardest working and most humble people. What is less appreciated, is the progressive and proactive nature of many of these people. Simply put, progress is the work and adaptation to meet the needs of the people we serve. Some may argue that progress can be questionable since change is slow and complicated, especially as dairy companies become more global. While it may be difficult to see big trends, there are individual choices that build proactive attitudes and progressive actions.
We see progress in dairy from innovating new ways to deliver protein and calcium in new dairy products to developing new data-sharing tools like BlockChain. Meanwhile, many take progress a step further and proactively question why we do what we do. They choose not to react but instead act for the best interest of our families that rely on safe and delicious dairy.
For example, we see farms that are adapting extensive sustainability plans from recycling sand to adopting renewable energy sources. These are not marketing efforts, instead unseen actions that improve herd management and the health of the larger community.
On the plant side, we see Quality teams looking at food safety as a broader issue than developing good plans. They see food safety as an opportunity to empower employees to develop and share ideas to improve operations. Some corporate teams take quality trends from individual plants and ask regional task forces to create geographically tailored action plans to improve their results. Others have operators help edit HACCP and other quality plans based on their real-life knowledge.
We need to stretch our progressive attitude to include a proactive approach when we look at innovation, education, and training. If we keep asking what our dairy lovers expect from us while engaging the full team, we can bridge more gaps and build more trust and love for dairy.
By Anne Bigalke
VP of International Markets, QualiTru Sampling Systems
anne@qualitru.com Follow Anne on LinkedIn