January is about looking forward and making resolutions. We resolve to do better and to make the coming year better than the year before. This applies beyond our personal lives. At the end of each year, the California Milk Advisory Board (CMAB) wraps up with a report to our dairy producers on the activities we’ve conducted to find a home for their milk – over 40 billion pounds of raw milk, the largest milk supply in the nation – and presents our plans for the future.
For 2012, that means kicking off a new five-year plan, our roadmap for achieving the goals we’ve set forth and measuring progress along the way. While the road has not always been smooth, the past five years have brought many successes for California dairy marketing, beginning with the introduction of the Real California Milk seal and continuing with expansion nationally and internationally. In 2007 when we introduced the RCM seal, we were focused on building U.S. markets for California cheese; California was a minor blip on the global dairy radar. Today, products with the Real California Milk and Cheese seals can be found not only throughout the United States but also in more than a dozen countries.