SIC 2021 Creamery Butter

Contenidos

• NAICS CODE(S).
• INDUSTRY SNAPSHOT.
• BACKGROUND AND DEVELOPMENT.
• CURRENT CONDITIONS.
• INDUSTRY LEADERS.
• RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY.
• FURTHER READING.

SIC 2021

This industry consists of establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing creamery butter.

NAICS CODE(S)

311512

Creamery Butter Manufacturing

INDUSTRY SNAPSHOT

Despite modern sanitary production methods, butter produced early in the twenty-first century is not much different from that enjoyed centuries ago by people who churned milk in animal skins slung from the backs of camels and horses. Butter manufacturing and marketing, a sector of the dairy industry, is extremely regionalized and competitive. The industry's quality standards and farm pricing are highly regulated by the U.S. government. Government price support programs were reduced throughout the 1990s, which led to a more competitive marketplace and more volatility in the prices of dairy products, including butter, by the early 2000s.

BACKGROUND AND DEVELOPMENT

Commercial production of butter is a relatively recent development. In 1870 nearly all of the 514 million pounds of U.S. butter was produced on farms. The spreading effects of the Industrial Era and the invention of machinery changed all that. In 1864, a Bavarian brewmaster applied the process of centrifugation to butter making. A cream batching machine was introduced in 1877, followed two years later by the continuous cream separator.

Other innovations helped to advance the industry. The Babcock test, perfected in 1890, accurately measured the percentage of fat in milk and cream. Pasteurization insured a high quality of both milk and cream. Additionally, the use of pure cultures of lactic acid bacteria and the invention of refrigeration aided the preservation of quality.

The first U.S. butter manufacturing creamery was built in Manchester, Iowa, in 1871. By 1991, commercial production exceeded 1.3 billion pounds, and Wisconsin and California were the leading butter producers, accounting for 654 million pounds. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1997 there were 34 establishments whose primary purpose was the manufacture of creamery butter. Wisconsin and California were still primary butter-producing states. Also, the largest U.S. single-site dairy complex was the Land O'Lakes plant in Tulare, California.

Under federal regulations, butter sold in the United States is made exclusively from milk or cream, or both, and must contain at...