• Featured Book: The Cheese Course
• Great Cows, Great Cheese
• U.S. Dairy Exports Sales Booming

Featured Book
The Cheese Course
By Janet Fletcher
Available through via the cowstore/Amazon.com
Hardcover -- 120 pages

How to do offer a "restaurant worthy" cheese platter presentation? As Arthur Boehm, of Amazon.com notes, this book is "part guide, part recipe book" that "offers a deft introduction to choosing and presenting cheese for mealtime enjoyment." Beginning with instruction on selecting the best cheeses, the book advises on cheeses that compliment and gives suggestions on harmonizing foods and drinks. Ideas for pairing and offering arrangement are plentiful.

Enjoy the variety of recipes for selections which feature cow's milk cheeses, goat's milk cheeses, sheep's milk cheeses, and mixed milk cheeses. As the entertainment season of the year approaches, this pleasing guide proposes wonderful suggestions while delighting your eye with pleasing, colorful "how-to" photos. Here's a treasure to share and enjoy!

Great Cows. Great Cheese

As TV viewers settle in to watch the new programs this fall, they will meet some talking California cows. California's 1.5 million dairy cows star in the new "It's The Cheese" television campaign debuting during prime time programming in October. The new campaign, the first major change in the CMAB's advertising since it debuted in 1995, tells consumers that one reason Real California Cheese is so delicious is that "Great Cheese Comes From Happy Cows. Happy Cows Come From California." The humorous TV spots feature talking cows describing just how happy they are, and illustrating why California cheese is so good.

U.S. Dairy Exports Sales Booming

Through May 2000, the total value of dairy exports was $406 million, up 17% from last year's record $347 million over the same time period, according to USDA's biannual report, "Dairy: World Markets and Trade." Contributing to this growth is a 50 percent increase in the value of the skim milk powder exports under the Dairy Export Incentive Program (DEIP), along with increased shipments of whey, whey protein concentrate, cheese, ice cream, infant formula and lactose. Exports of fresh and condensed milk, which have lagged in recent years, also are up from 1999.

Among customers, Canada has become the number one export destination for U.S. dairy products. Exports to Mexico are down slightly (mostly due to the pattern of DEIP shipments, rather than a decline in market demand). Exports to Japan, the number three market, are up more than 10 percent.

Reprinted with permission from Dairy Management Inc.

This section was compiled
by Margo Souza