Tillamook County Creamery Association
|
|
Tillamook_county_creamery_association.triddle.jpg
The Tillamook County Creamery Association is a dairy co-operative headquartered in Tillamook County, Oregon. The association's main facility is the Tillamook Cheese Factory located two miles north of the small town of Tillamook, Oregon on U.S. Highway 101; a second cheese-making facility was built at Boardman, Oregon in 2001. The Tillamook factory hosts over a million tourists each year. Visitors watch the production of cheese from a viewing gallery over the main production floor.
The co-operative includes 150 dairy farms mostly within Tillamook County. Products produced by the co-operative include milk, cheese, ice cream, sour cream and yogurt. Their most famous product is Tillamook Cheese.
In 1854, several farmers from the county built a schooner to transport butter to Portland, Oregon. Peter McIntosh and T. S. Townsend established the county's first cheese factory in 1894. The association was founded by dairy farmers in 1909.
In 2000, the association bought the cheese co-operative in Bandon, Oregon, then closed its cheese-making facilities in that town a few years later. The association has since gained more animosity from that community in its enforcement of the Tillamook Cheese and Bandon Cheese trademarks against local businesses.
The creamery made news in February of 2005 after the board asked all members to stop using genetically engineered hormones on their dairy cows, in spite of pressures from the chemical company Monsanto.
External links
- Tillamook Cheese web site (http://www.tillamookcheese.com/index.html)