Dairy Checkoff has partnered with fast food chains that help sell more cheese, and yet one pre-emptive cheese company is a primary beneficiary, and rapid milk production expansion in certain states follows with that. Plenty of marketing agencies work for competing accounts in the world of advertising and public relations. Dairy efforts is to increase exports, it is interesting to note that these gains have had a reverse effect on dairy farm milk price revenue, according to a recent study by dairy economist and supply chain expert Chuck Nicholson (more on that, too, another day). Several file their public IRS 990 forms under alias names, so these forms are a challenge to find. Some of the boards of these related organizations are not announced except on these IRS forms. The USDA (MyPlate) is now concerned about students getting enough sleep, so the sleep industry, like Sleep Number, board the GENYOUth schoolbus with donations, and a new sleep program is added to GENYOUth messaging.

Over those past 12 to 13 years, the direction of promotion has moved off-radar through partnerships. This began with DMI’s creation of the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy (known officially to the IRS as the Dairy Center for Strategic Innovation and Collaboration). Within the Innovation Center is the Sustainability Initiative headed by Mike McCloskey over the past 12 to 13 years and known officially as listed on IRS 990 forms as Global Dairy Platform. Videos about what the world would be like if it all went vegan were released a few weeks prior by the internationally-renowend magazine, The Economist. I have recently read Farmshine articles where GENYOUth and other checkoff related matters are discussed.

DMI umbrella covers seen and unseen

The situation is far more subtle, and clever, because Edelman “loaned” their Amersterdam office account director, Lara Luten, to the EAT FReSH initiative for at least one year prior to 2019’s EAT FReSH launch. Richard Edelman sits on the board of GENYOUth https://turbo-tax.org/turbotax-super-bowl-commercial-tv-ad-2021-taxfacts/ and as previously mentioned, he is credited with recruiting GENYOUth CEO Alexis Glick in a marketing publication’s story about her taking this position. Other employee compensation totaled $517,165, including vice president Mark Block, at $221,000.

My fellow board members and I take great care in knowing and watching how every penny is spent by the checkoff to improve sales and trust on behalf of all dairy farmers. And we take program measurement and accountability seriously. We asked for comments https://turbo-tax.org/ about the benefits of GENYOUth programs to dairy farmers, such as what has been mentioned in the articles already in terms of breakfast carts containing dairy offerings, asking for specific information about recorded dairy sales via the breakfast carts.

Creation of GENYOUth in 2010 brought Dairy Checkoff and USDA into closer alignment

The dairy industry had and has Tom Vilsack — or vice versa. In 2018, as in previous years, the NFL received $5 million; Edelman, the world’s largest PR firm, received $16 million; Fairlife $8 million, Domino’s $9 million, a marketing firm for GENYOUth with ties to Edelman $4 million, McDonald’s $5 million, and Vilsack got his virtual million. Vilsack started with DMI six days after the Obama Administration ended in January 2017.

• Dairy transformation has been in the works for 12 to 13 years through the proprietary partnerships working ‘pre-competitively’ within the vehicles constructed with mandatory farmer funds under the DMI umbrella.
• Going back to part one, the graph showing fluid milk consumption trends could not be more clear.
• Another cross-over alliance is Corteva Agriscience / DuPont / Dow as Dupont is part of the corporate EAT FReSH alliance and Corteva now has representation on the GENYOUth board via Krysta Harden, who served as Deputy Secretary of Agriculture under Secretary Vilsack.
• Meanwhile, new generations of children and adults do not know what real milk and dairy products taste like, and they know absolutely zero about the nutrition in them.
• At a recent dairy risk management seminar in Harrisburg, Pa., a panel of DMI staff mentioned the new “Center for Dairy Excellence”, which they said is unrelated to Pennsylvania’s Center for Dairy Excellence, it just happens to use the same name.

Those ads get rated, replayed and talked about for weeks. Whenever these questions are asked at meetings or on conference calls, dairy checkoff leaders say – in unison – “television ads don’t work” and “the NFL owns Play 60, but we own the Fuel Up and can use the Fuel Up to Play 60. By his own admission, DMI CEO Tom Gallagher says the checkoff has been working through its partnerships over the past 12 to 13 years on the sustainability plan and Net Zero Initiative. Now the rollout dove tails in content and timing with the malarkey coming out of the World Economic Forum Great Reset and its food transformation stalwart the World Wildlife Fund (also known as Worldwide Fund for Nature, WWF). None of this is, by itself, alarming, until peeling back the layers to see that Edelman is the core asset for the EAT FReSH launch as part of its move toward working with clients to build social values into business communication goals.

Are we going to keep zigging? Or is it time to zag?

This is especially true about the questions concerning the firm doing public relations and marketing for DMI over the past 20 years. Telling consumers our ‘why’ can be a good thing, but with 15 cents per hundredweight forked over by farmers by government mandate, the question remains, what is being done to truly sell the “what” — the actual milk that comes out of the cow because of all the good things farmers do. This series of articles is not meant to question the good intent of good people doing what they believe is good for their industry. Rather, the point is to show the direction dairy promotion dollars have taken since 2009 and some of the guiding principles that are not working.

Milk will become yucky to them, and the one they get with their school lunch and/or breakfast will likely go into the trash. Such is the plight for millions of children in our schools every day over the nine years of government prohibition against whole milk. Meanwhile the weights and waste at U.S. schools are ballooning out of control.

GENYOUth and friends, including USDA, want today’s teens to place more decision-making emphasis on the impact of food on the environment. In the Insights article, GENYOUth points out to its partnering companies and schools that kids don’t care enough about the environmental impact of the food they choose to eat. Back in the last cycle of Dietary Guidelines (2015), the committee attempted to use anti-cattle “sustainability” and “planetary health” as criteria in meal pattern recommendations.

• USDEC’s total revenue was $24.6 mil in 2017, of which $1.43 mil came from membership dues, $5.7 mil from government grants and $17.1 mil from DMI.
• But again, no public statement or answers to these questions are forthcoming.
• These questions were presented, and two options were offered — answering the questions point-by-point or providing a letter of response.