originally practiced medicine for all kinds of animals, Allan eventually narrowed his focus to dairy cows, and even more specifically to diagnosing and controlling a disease called mastitis. Cows can contract mastitis from bacteria on the farms where they’re raised and milked, and it has disastrous effects on their milk’s production and quality. Unsurprisingly, American dairy farmers are eager to avoid the disease at all costs in order to keep their cows healthy, their customers happy, and their reputations sterling. “People from all over the world come and admire the production facilities we have in North America because we produce some of the highest quality milk at the highest production per cow, and we can only do this with all of this focus on using science to make the best possible product that we can,” Allan told us, adding, “Not only is milk a very nutritious product that people like to drink and is good for you, but bacteria seem to like it, too. It’s a constant challenge to make sure the bacteria populations on the facility are such that it doesn’t interfere with our objectives to be able to ship and produce high-quality milk.” That’s where Udder Health comes in. Its staff members conduct on-site visits to family dairy farms (Allan estimates there are 100 dairies within 100 miles of its Meridian, Idaho, headquarters and another 400-500 in the 100 miles surrounding its Idaho lab in Jerome), and sample milk straight from cows, milk from the bulk tank, and swabs from items in the surrounding environment like bedding, water, towels, and more. Then, they take those samples back to the nearest Udder Health laboratory for testing. Dairy farms that employ Udder Health are going above and beyond government regulations, but they know that healthier cows produce more milk, and that higher-quality milk fetches higher prices. Allan’s daughter, Dr. Justine Britton, is
an expert on the lab testing process and its importance to farmers. She recently earned her Ph.D. from Utah State University in animal, dairy, and veterinary science after 10 years of working at Udder Health and rejoined the company as its Laboratory Director, taking over a share of day-to-day operations from her father. “Pasteurizing has been a blessing for the dairy industry, but you still need to start with a high-quality product or you’ll have more spoilage issues and less usability, plus discard more,” Justine said, adding that when milk is high-quality, dairymen get paid a premium. Healthy animals also produce more milk, which means more dairy products get to the shelves and turn a profit. “Most processors do understand that the quality of the product they receive will affect their usability of it, so they’re motivated to work with producers to provide quality incentives,” she said. Some of those benchmarks have disappeared over the years in favor of efficiency, which has reshaped the industry.
Today, farms are bigger and margins on milk are slimmer than they were in the past, but Justine and Allan both said the dairymen Udder Health works with still care deeply about their cows. “Large is proving to be the way of the future because it’s more economically efficient, but that doesn’t mean they’re not still family farms, and often they’re run very well,” Justine said. “That’s why they’re there; that’s why they’re large. If they weren’t run well, they would go out of business.” All four of Udder Health’s branches conduct milk testing, but each lab also has its own specialty that enlarges the scope of the company. The two largest facilities, in Meridian and Jerome, produce microbiological agar (a jelly-like substance used in petri dishes) for their own use and to sell to more than 100 other veterinary clinics. Most of those clinics are in the U.S., but one Qatar-based clinic also uses Udder Health’s cultures. The Jerome office is also an accredited food testing lab, and does regulatory testing on food and consumer products like cheese,
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