Every year in the UK, the average person eats over five kilograms of cheese, and we make over three-hundred-thousand tonnes of the stuff. So let’s look at how cheese is produced.

I bet you didn’t know that cheese is a living product. It relies on bacteria, fungi and moulds to give it its flavour and texture. These microbes are crucial in cheesemaking. Without them, we wouldn’t have stilton and other blue cheeses, and brie would lack its distinctive, flavoursome rind.

Separating the curds and whey is one of the most important parts of the cheesemaking process. Long ago producers would have separated curds from whey by draining the mixture in baskets and applying weights to force the whey through.  But today, technology plays a key role in its manufacture, allowing steps to be controlled down to the most minute detail.

For example, technology lets the producer control the temperature in the vats, how quickly the mixture heats or cools, what size curds are cut to and so on. Minor changes in these settings could have a big affect on the quality of the cheese. But this automation eliminates human error and inconsistency so makers can produce identical products over and over and provide the consumer with reliable quality.

When packaging products that will be eaten, a manufacturer has to choose their materials carefully. If they use a style of packaging that will touch the food, like a plastic wrap or paper wrap, the law says that that material must be approved for direct-food-contact. Packaging that wraps just one item is called primary packaging.

They also have to think about whether the product is going on supermarket shelves. If so, then it needs secondary packaging – packaging that groups lots of items together. Fivemiletown has designed a convenient carton for shops. You simply tear off the front, slot the carton onto the shelf, and up to twelve packets of cheese are displayed at once.

These days it seems that a lot of attention is placed on diet and nutrition – both the good and the bad. But where does good nutrition begin?

Well if you’ve learned about food chains, then you’ll know that You Are, literally, What You Eat. So the goodness of every sausage we enjoy and every yoghurt we have at lunch depends on the health of the pig and cow that provided the pork and milk.  What did they eat, and was it healthy? Their nutrition affects our nutrition, and animal nutrition is big business.

In the agrifood industry, scientific research and data is essential for developing new products and making important decisions. At John Thompson’s and Sons, research helps them produce nutritious, fit-for-purpose animal feed that meets farmers’ needs. They also work closely with independent bodies like the College of Agriculture, Farming and Rural Environment and the Agricultural Food and Biosciences Institute to understand what’s changing in the industry and how they can help farmers meet those new challenges.  Working together, scientists, agronomists and animal nutritionists develop, test and evaluate new feed formulas before they’re sold.

With research comes innovation. Innovate means to introduce something new or different. Innovation is hard. It requires problem-solving, setting new goals, and trying new ways of doing things. There’ll always be times when a new idea doesn’t work, but scientists simply keep experimenting until they find answers to their questions.

When you visit John Thompson & Son’s, you can see it’s a big building – eight stories high!  But inside, it’s surprising how empty it looks. The only time you see any movement is at the packing facility or when the lorries deliver the raw materials and load the finished products.

That’s because at this mill, almost every step in the production process is automated and hidden out of sight. Automated means that machines and other technology do nearly all the work on their own and need very little input from people. Your home’s dishwasher is a good example of automation. You press a button, and it does the washing, rinsing and drying automatically.