When new products show up in the grocery store dairy case, it takes time and money to convince consumers to try them.
“The dairy industry has been very uninteresting for a very long time,” said Jim Smith, director of marketing for the Australian company A2 during a special dairy processing webinar sponsored by Food Navigator.
Consumers need education on the value of milk as a highly nutritious “superfood,” he said.
Jesse Merrill of Good Culture in California, which produces cottage cheese, said launching a new product is risky for dairy processors because of its limited shelf life.
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He said cottage cheese consumption in the United States has declined to about half of the five-pounds-per-person-per-year average of 1975.
“People are definitely looking for the next Greek yogurt. There is some hope cottage cheese could fill that void.”
In many developed countries, liquid milk consumption is flat or declining but butter, cheese, coffee creamers and yogurt drinks are showing growth.
In the United States, surveys indicate a steady drop in fluid milk consumption. In 2008, more than 70 percent of households said they always had milk on hand. In 2014, about half of the households surveyed reported they had milk at home.
However, most households said they had yogurt.
Canada is similar, said Thérèse Beaulieu of Dairy Farmers of Canada in an interview.
In the last 12 months, Canadian cheese sales have steadily increased, while retail sales of milk have declined.
“Fluid milk continues to go down, but cheese, because of the variety there is, is increasing,” she said.
“If we expand our analysis a few years, we can observe that consumers were seeking to taste more variety of cheese, especially fine cheeses.”
After seeing significant growth in 2013, Canadian yogurt sales levelled off in 2014, while ice cream sales decreased.
A recent report from Statistics Canada called the Canadian Community Health Survey found most Canadians do not consume the minimum recommended dairy servings for their age group.
More than 80 percent of girls and 60 percent of boys aged 10 to 16 years old and more than two thirds of men and women older than 30 did not consume .
Only 20 percent of women and 26 percent of men aged 50 and older consumed two servings every day, when they should consume three daily servings.
