White Cheese Case Study

Consumer Preference and Value Addition of Producers for White Cheese

REVIEW OF LITERATURE Dairy products are divided into two major groups, the fluid and manufactured. Fluid products are denoted as beverage milk while manufactured product are further divided into ‘soft’ and ‘hard’. Hard products are those which are usually associated with the manufactured milk industry like cheese, butter and powder milk. Soft products are those associated with the fluid milk processing industry which include ice cream and cottage cheese. In the Philippines, the available sources of raw milk are cows, carabao and goats. White cheese is traditionally made from carabao’s milk. Based on personal interview with some of white cheese processors in Santa Cruz, Laguna,

The business was a success, as a total of 70% supply of white cheese. Around 300- 400 liters of carabao’s milk were processed to the firm. However, in 1976 a difficulty in the procurement of milk arise. The Dairy Training Research institute began to purchase milk from Santa Cruz. The firm’s supply of milk declined until they ended up processing only 10- 20 liters of milk every day. Due to this problem, the business transactions with the white cheese wholesalers in Baguio, Lucena and Batangas were ceased. The firm decided to accept retailers who would sell white cheese along the roadside and accept orders from customers who used cheese for consumption. A low production of carabaos resulted to a low supply of milk. That is what happened to the case of Puring’s white

She said that it remained stagnant over the passing time. Limited supply of carabao’s milk has been identified as one of this leading factor. She also stated that aside from low production, most carabaos are used in farms and only few people are engaged in this white cheese production. Low supply also leads to low production volume. Another is keeping the quality of the white cheese produced. Most attempts to modify white cheese making on improving its quality and invariably included pasteurization. This prolonged the manufacturing processes and was not fully appreciated by the cheese makers. It is never easy to make changes in technology. A research conducted by Rajbhandary and Castillo, found out that the Santa Cruz soft cheese manufacturers objected to pasteurization of raw carabao’s milk because it involves additional work and expense. The pasteurized milk exhibits slow clotting and soft curd formation that would lengthen the time involved in soft cheese