Chobani Launches Initiative to Support Dairy Industry

(KMVT) – Yogurt giant Chobani recently announced a plan to further support the dairy industry, including the farmers and the animals.

The initiative is called Milk Matters.

The company is partnering with multiple businesses across the United States to show their support for the industry.

“Milk, we often say, we have milk in our veins at Chobani,”said Peter McGuinness, chief marketing and commercial officer for the company. “Since it’s such an important part of our business, we couldn’t help but notice the plight of a dairy farmer and we really dug into the dairy industry and dairy farming in general.”

He said there is a lot of “negative noise” out there impacting the industry as a whole, ranging from dairies going under and the bad reputation there is about not treating animals correctly.

The company will be working with Fair Trade USA to look at developing a first certification standard for U.S. dairies that support farmers and their workers.

The program has six pillars: environmental stewardship, animal care, worker well-being, local sourcing, economic opportunity in dairy communities and support for the dairy farms.

“This thing is far reaching,” he said. “You’re talking, we’ve got six or seven, actually seven or eight partners that we’re working to tackle these six pillars… We don’t think this is going to solve everything, but we think it’s a step in the right direction and we feel really good about it and we’re proud to launch it and we’re proud to help in any way we can.”

Their goals are to stop dairies from going under, hopefully see new ones open and celebrate all the dairy industry does.

The program will be launched sometime this year and they are hoping to have 100 percent of it implemented by 2025.