Dairy processors milk new technology

Prepared Foods, April, 1989 by Daniel Best

Dairy Processors milk new technology

Not surprisingly, the dairy industry has muscled its way to the forefront of technology development. The dairy industry has surpassed all other segments of the food industry in amassing a war chest of funds for new product and technology development.

According to Dr. Joseph O'Donnell, director of science and technology with the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, much of the resurgence in dairy R&D activity is directly attributable to the 1983 Dairy & Tobacco Readjustment Act (PL 98-180), which mandated the 15-cent-per-hundredweight charge to producers.

"The dairy check-off program created an over-$200 million investment pool for the dairy industry, of which fully $8 million was allocated for new product research." explains O'Donnell.

The nutrition connection

Homilies to the pure, wholesome image of milk notwithstanding, milk has been more vulnerable to consumer concerns about fat, calories, and cholesterol than any other food commodity except eggs. It stands to the industry's credit (and its commitment to R&D) that it has been able to deflect consumer concerns on these issues away from dairy products by giving consumers what they wanted: low-fat, low-calorie, and low-cholesterol dairy products.

In 1988, the National Dairy Council commissioned a national steering committee of independent nutritionists, product developers, marketers, farmers, lawyers and public relations specalists The objective of the commission was to identify and examine the most critical nutritional issues facing the dairy industry and to map long-term strategies to address them.

Dubbed the "Bridge Project," the commission reconfirmed that efforts by the dairy industry to ignore or resist the nutritional concerns of consumers would ultimately be self-defeating.

Instead, the commission recommended that the "dairy industry pull together and develop one unified strategic plan to manage the fat and cholestol issues--now and in the future."

The good news is that the 1988 Federal Working Group on National Nutrition Objectives for the Year 2000, citing the need to improve calcium nutrition, targeted a major increase in dairy product consumption as a national nutritional goal.

A review of current research efforts to address these twin issues reveals just how firm the dairy industry's commitments to nutritional quality is.

Managing cholesterol

Cholesterol remains a critical obstacle to the acceptance of dairy products for many consumers. Today, at least four technical strategies hold promise for rendering cholesterol an irrelevant byproduct of dairy processing. . The simplest, most direct approach is to use defatted "skim" milk. This is the approach used by yogurt and ice milk manufacturers and at least one cheese manufacturer (see sidebar). . The University of Wisconsin, under the direction of Dr. Robert Bradley, has pursued the use of supercritical fluid extraction of cholesterol from butter, using carbon dioxide as the solvent. Independent sources confirm that butter so processed is of very high quality.

The researchers expect to begin commercial feasibility studies during the second half of 1989. . For some products (cheese, for example), supercritical extraction may not be feasible as it could alter the flavor, texture, and color of the product, such as fat-based, aged cheese flavors.

No problem according to researchers Dr. Donald Beitz and his colleagues at Iowa State University (Ames, Iowa). Their solution is to add an enzyme that reduces cholesterol directly to milk.

Cholesterol reductase is an enzyme that transforms cholesterol into coprostanol, an innocuous compound that is believed to remain inert during its passage through the digestive system. Researchers must prove that this is indeed the case, however.

A more serious problem is identifying commercially viable sources of the enzyme and its cofactors.

Dr. Susan Harlander, of the University of Minnesota (St. Paul, Minn.), thinks she has an even better solution. Rather than trying to doctor fluid milk-with expensive enzymes and cofactors, why not redesign the culture bacteria so that they produce their own cholesterol reductase activity? Then, bacteria can produce their own cholesterol reductase and cofactors while they produce cheese.

Harlander has already identified potential organisms from which cholesterol-reducing enzyme activities could be transplanted into cheese starter cultures.

"We don't have the redesigned dairy culture yet, and we don't know yet how the genes will be expressed," concedes Harlander. Yet, her work suggests some of the fermented dairy industry's most exciting opportunities to date.

Disposing of butterfat

The mountain of butterfat gets bigger and bigger-and nobody knows what to do with it. About 61% of butterfat is saturated fat, an undesirable dietary component in the eyes of many.

The demand for lowfat, low-calorie dairy products continues to generate a surplus of butterfat that is expected to reach 1 billion pounds per year by the year 2000, according to Jerry Dryer, associate publisher/editor of Dairy Foods, an industry trade publication.