About 1,000 dairy industry representatives got an update on activites funded by the national dairy checkoff program last week at the 2006 National Dairy Board/United Dairy Industry Association/National Milk Producers Federation Joint Annual Meeting in Las Vegas.

Tom Gallagher, chief executive officer of Dairy Management Inc., told the group that dairy promotion is helping the entire industry convert unmet demand into sales through strong partnerships with industry leaders and innovators that “have introduced new products, new positionings with consumers, and new places for our products.”

One example he gave was partnerships with Burger King®, Sonic® Drive-Ins and Subway® led to the introduction of flavored and white milk in plastic, round resealable bottles, resulting in sales of more than 100 million incremental pounds of milk. When these sales are added to existing partnerships with Wendy’s® and McDonald’s®, this amounts to 35,000 restaurants selling 250 million incremental pounds of Class I milk.

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