Consumer requirements for milk and milk products have changed dramatically over the last 30 years and will continue to develop. Key drivers of change are explored and opinions given on what will be the impact of these changes in the make up of the population, lifestyles and attitudes on food purchasing and consumption in general and on the dairy sector in particular. The dairy sector has the opportunity to meet many of the requirements of current and future consumers in terms of diversity, healthiness, method of production and value for money. Processors will then have to ensure that they can modify existing products in terms of composition and packaging/presentation to meet the needs of various niches in each consumer product sector. Functional properties will become ever more important for the emerging food-service and food manufacturing sectors. Underpinning the development of all new technologies and methods of production must be a recognition that systems must be environmentally friendly, provide healthy and high quality products and deliver real consumer benefits in terms of taste, value or some other parameter. It is not sufficient for the technology simply to deliver production cost benefits if these are not to be passed on to the consumer - particularly if the technology of doing this is seen as being “unnatural”.

It is also suggested that the industry and its core products already possess a number of key attributes relevant to today's consumer in terms of such parameters as “natural”, “healthy” and “diversity” but that insufficient funds are being expended in communicating these benefits to consumers and opinion formers.