Economic Comparisons of Cheddar Cheese Manufactured with Defined-Strain and Commercial Mixed-Strain Culturesa

Exclusive use of defined-strain cultures has resulted in manufacturing improvements of significant economic importance for several Pacific Northwest cheese plants. Starter failure from bacteriophage infection was eliminated. Exclusive use of defined strains in cheese making resulted in greater cheese uniformity, day-to-day consistency, and upgraded cheese quality. The percentage of total cheese graded A was increased by almost 10%. Because of predictable starter activity, manufacturing procedures were standardized. Ripening times were eliminated, cheese-making times shortened, and culture rotations were replaced with a single culture-blend. Some factories increased cheese yields by adding whey cream to cheese milk. These improvements resulted in a revenue increase of over $1 million for a cheese factory producing 11.35 million kg of cheese per year. The combination of these improvements, all based on defined-strain technology, enabled factories to increase production -some by nearly 50%. To date, more than 113 million kg of Cheddar cheese have been manufactured with the defined-strain cultures.