YELLOW PAGES, THE

Dairy Field, Oct 2004 by Dudlicek, James

Scrupulous testing and distinctive processing at Mayfield's hometown plant contribute to the brand's success.

"Food safety begins on the farm," says Barry Derrick, quality assurance manager at Mayfield Dairy Farms' processing facility in Athens, Tenn.

Thus begins the story of how Mayfield manages to produce the purest, freshest-tasting product possible, time after time, batch after batch.

To be sure, no milk even gets past the front gate unless it passes rigorous quality testing.

"Only milk from Grade A farms is acceptable," Derrick says. "These farms are regularly inspected by the Department of Agriculture and our own field personnel."

Raw milk is procured for Mayfield and other Dean Foods divisions in the Southeast by Dairy Marketing Services (DMS). The milk comes from about 150 independent producers, primarily from within Tennessee, according to Jack Grubb, DMS field representative and a 56-year Mayfield veteran. But if production demands require it, milk can be brought in from as far away as Wisconsin and Texas, Grubb says.

The plant receives about 25 tankers of raw milk per day, each carrying about 55,000 pounds of milk. They arrive at the scale house where they're weighed and samples are taken for testing. "Milk from several farms may be commingled on one tanker," Derrick says. "For security reasons, all ports on the tankers must be sealed and seal numbers must be documented. When a tanker arrives, the top seal is broken, the temperature of the milk is taken and a sample is collected."

Testing for antibiotics and bacteria, among other things, takes about 10 minutes. If the load tests clean, the truck proceeds to the plant for offloading. If it fails, the load is turned away. Data is kept on each batch of milk from each farm contributing to the total load, so Mayfield can "weed out which producer is the culprit" in the event of a bad batch, Grubb explains. Each batch is weighed at the farm, and the total weight upon arrival at the plant must match the batch total.

"Every load of milk gets this same treatment," Grubb says, explaining that DMS works closely with producers to rectify problems. "The farmer works for us, so we work together to solve problems. That gives us top-quality raw milk."

All testing data is logged by the plant and kept on file in case of future problems or inquiries by regulatory authorities.

Fillin' Yellow Jugs

Once milk is deemed fit for Mayfield's use, the journey to the consumer begins.

Mayfield's trademark yellow milk jugs are manufactured on site by the dairy's own blow-molding operation. The plant can turn out 7,800 gallon jugs and 6,400 half-gallon jugs every hour on six machines, four for gallons and two for half gallons.

The light-blocking containers are made from a combination of new plastic, yellow color pellets and regrind, or scrap from the molding process. Finished jugs are sent by overhead conveyor to the filling lines.

While the distinctive yellow jugs are made at the plant, all other milk containers - including the famous Chug that Mayfield launched for Dean - are brought in from off site. But the Athens plant is responsible for applying the shrink-sleeve labels to the plastic milk bottles, not only for Mayfield-branded products but for Barber's and Dean branded milks as well.

A descrambling machine uprights and sorts bottles loaded into the shrink-sleeving machine. Bottles traveling to the two shrink-sleeving lines receive labels dropped from above at a rate of 350 bottles a minute, then head through the shrink tunnel to finish the label application process.

Labeled bottles join their yellow cousins on a conveyor journey across a bridge over a street bisecting the plant on their way to the filling area. The entire plant used to be across the street; the blow-molding operation is housed in a former textile mill that was added to the Mayfield plant complex, according to Chad McKeehan, assistant manager of the visitor center at the Athens plant.

Bottles are fed into their appropriate lines: two gallon fillers, one half-gallon filler, a quart filler, a pint filler and three half-pint fillers. All are rotary fillers except for the half-pint gabletop carton line.

Yellow jugs descend from the bridge and receive inkjet code dating and a paper label before being filled. The bottles are filled, spun around for application of a one-piece tamper-evident cap and sent onward down the line for crating.

Fillers do their jobs at a rate of 100 gallons per minute, McKeehan says. The plant processes and bottles about 180,000 gallons per day on all its fluid lines, based on annual averages, he says.

Quality-control staffers take samples of product off each line every 30 minutes for testing and to store for research purposes, Derrick says. One sample of each run is stored in a heat-shock cooler, where they're held at 45 degrees F and tested again after seven days, to cover most expected home and retail refrigeration scenarios, he explains. Samples are actually pulled for testing at each stage of production, from pasteurized tanks, holding tanks and fillers, according to production supervisor Alan Hennessee.