VILLAGE OF PLAIN (WKOW) — U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin visited Cedar Grove Cheese in the Village of Plain Saturday to meet with and advocate for those in the dairy industry.
There, Baldwin toured the property and spoke about the Dairy Business Innovation Initiative that she wrote to support dairy businesses in their production, marketing and distribution.
“This visit was hearing from several area farmers and dairy processors to talk about how that program has helped them innovate, improve efficiency, produce new offerings and its very exciting to hear that its working and more and more farmers are reaching out to learn more about the program,” Baldwin said.
Baldwin added that the initiative comes at a time when a staggering number of dairy businesses have struggled to make ends meet during the pandemic and during a time when many products are claiming to be dairy even though they are not.
“There’s now a lot of plant based products that are using dairy’s good name, but are imitation dairy products, and because the standards are defined in law, I think they should not be pretending to be milk, or yogurt or ice cream if they don’t contain dairy,” Baldwin said.
Several local cheese makers and dairy experts also spoke during Baldwin’s visit about what has worked well for them and about what they hope to see moving forward.
