Dairy Industry

If you don't like ice cream, you're going to hate this summer. Summer is to ice cream sales what winter is to sales of chicken noodle soup. About half of all the ice cream and frozen yogurt sold this year will be dished out over the next four months. And following three years of virtually flat sales, ice cream makers are mounting a massive effort to whip up excitement in the $11-billion industry.

The relentless spread of foot-and-mouth disease among livestock in Europe has stirred alarm and dredged up bitter memories in agricultural communities across California, from northern cattle country to the vast industrial dairies of Chino. State officials estimate a broad outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, a hardy virus that spreads quickly among animals, could cause more than $13.5 billion in damage to California's livestock producers and the dairy industry, the nation's biggest.

Cows and cow-related collectibles were the rage during the 1980s. Some just wanted collectibles that pictured the animal. Others became fascinated with the history and tools of the dairy industry. Cows have been a popular part of advertising since the mid-19th century. Trade cards and labels for milk-based beverages, shortening using butter, condensed milk and cheese used the obvious symbol of a cow. A few cow trademarks have remained famous.

When Bob Giacomini and daughters decided to go into cheese-making, they built a cheese plant first and figured out how to actually run it second. If this sounds odd, it was. But the Giacominis not only had pockets deep enough to afford it, they had the milk. They owned a 700-acre dairy farm on Tomales Bay, north of San Francisco, with 500 Holstein cows. After luring the manager of the Maytag Blue plant in Iowa to oversee the new Californian cheese works, they began production in August 2000.

For now, the cows still vastly outnumber the newcomers in the Chino basin. They recline on 20-foot piles of manure, gazing placidly at billboards touting "25 New Neighborhoods." But as developers scan the region for space, they are rapidly discovering the 50 square miles of dairy lands situated among four freeways straddling San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

The California Milk Advisory Board continues to ply its "Happy Cows" advertising campaign, but there are few happy dairy farmers right now. Frustrated with low milk prices, dairy farmers are selling cows for hamburger meat and threatening to dump milk into sewers. Many are burning through their life savings hoping to survive the slump, and others are exiting the business. Two farmers have killed themselves. The pain is being felt throughout the U.S.

Santa Ana-based Adohr Farms on Friday recalled more than 30,000 gallons of milk and other dairy products contaminated with penicillin, but as much as 5,000 gallons of the tainted product may have been sold, officials said. The milk, which contains beta-lactam, an antibiotic residue of penicillin, could cause an allergic reaction in some people, but does not pose a general health risk, state health officials said.

The nation's largest dairy processor and distributor, Dean Foods Co., on Monday agreed to buy the dairy businesses of American Stores Co.'s two California Lucky units for about $34 million in cash to expand its dairy network to the West Coast. Dean Foods would acquire four dedicated fluid-milk processing plants and an ice cream plant from the Lucky businesses. It also would acquire $2 million to $5 million in inventory in the transaction.

No matter how much milk Americans drink, there are millions of Europeans and New Zealanders who keep guzzling more. According to projections by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average consumption of fluid milk by Americans next year may be 110.5 kilograms, down slightly from this year. That's about 28.3 gallons per person, allowing for 3.9 kilograms for each gallon. The 1988 average per capita for the 12-nation European Economic Community is expected to be 89.