Student judges ‘relight the fire’ at yearly competition

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Each year, the Upper Midwest Dairy Industry Association works in collaboration with the Minnesota State Fair to conduct the UMDIA Minnesota State Fair Butter and Cheese Contest for makers across the region.

The decades-long tradition recognizes cheese and butter makers for their quality products. Winners of the categories, along with other butters and cheeses from Minnesota, will be on display during the Great Minnesota Get-Together. This year’s cheese and butter entries were from all over the Midwest, and each class averaged 15 entries. The entries ranged from small cheese makers to large cooperatives.

Each year the judging takes place in June and winners are announced at the Minnesota State Fair in August. This year, the committee decided to put a new spin on the judging process.

“We came up with this idea to bring in student judges with a lead judge,” John Wolf said. “It was a collaborative effort and it would give the students actual experience.”

Wolf, a dairy inspection supervisor with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, is currently serving as chair of the UMDIA Minnesota State Fair Cheese and Butter Contest. Ruben Nilsson, dairy plant manager at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls’ Wuethrich Family/Grassland Dairy Center of Excellence, and Mitchell Maher, plant manager at the University of Minnesota’s Joseph J. Warthesen Food Processing Center, are also on the committee.

“Bringing in the students helped relight the fire for this contest and it made it different than it has ever been,” Nilsson said. “It makes it exciting. This year the committee really exceeded all expectations.”

To include the student judges, Wolf said they began by contacting the dairy product judging teams, which are student-run clubs on many college campuses.

“We reached out to the advisors and coaches to see if they would be interested in participating since they are training all year round for their own competitions on butter, ice cream and cheese,” Wolf said. “For our competition, they got to be the judge and were not the ones being judged.”

The committee reached out to teams judging for South Dakota State University, UMN and UW-River Falls. Lead judges with experience were also contacted and presented with the idea of working with the student judges.

“Because students are only trained in some types of cheese, they just don’t have that experience with all the types of cheese out there yet,” Maher said. “The lead judges also have that technical background such as how it was made.”

For this contest, the judges are looking at defects, appearance, body, flavor and texture.

“The mentor judges have been in the specialty cheese industry for many years and were able to teach the students that this is what this type of cheese should be like,” Nilsson said.

Since the judging took place over the summer, students were able to participate in the judging individually and not as a team.

“The feedback from the students has been positive; they gained experience and had fun,” Wolf said. “Hopefully some of these students will come back again next year to help judge again.”

For future contests, the committee hopes to broaden participation.

“We hope to include more universities that are in our region as we hope to expand our cheese competition,” Nilsson said.

Wolf agreed.

“We would love to invite the wider dairy industry to support getting these students here,” he said. “I think it’s a pretty cool opportunity to help bring the new generation into the dairy industry.”

The committee agreed that the new format went well and that providing real-world experience for students is a win-win.

“This opportunity provides an outlet for the students, while they are learning about this already from a textbook,” Maher said. “When you know where the results are going and that you were part of something, it is exciting for these students. It’s good exposure for students all around.”