(AP) – After more than 20 years, Louisiana State University students can once again buy the most basic dairy product at the LSU AgCenter Dairy Store.
The store has been selling campus-made cheese and ice cream along with sandwiches, muffins, coffee, soft drinks, soup and campus-produced meat – goat, pork, beef and lamb – but not milk.
Quarts of white and chocolate milk also are currently being sold, though animal science major Chansanique Parker said few customers seem to realize it’s available.
“We sold milk here and even provided milk for the whole campus up until about 20 years ago,” said Gary Hay, director of the AgCenter’s School of Animal Sciences.
The dairy store opened as an ice-cream shop, he said in an email. When LSU began taking bids for campus-wide food service, the AgCenter stopped bottling milk.
Lots of customers wanted to buy LSU milk, so it was brought back in a size that doesn’t compete with the food service offerings, he said.
The milk comes from LSU’s dairy and is pasteurized, homogenized and bottled on campus, dairy science professor Chuck Boeneke said.
He said a dairy near Mobile, Ala., gave the AgCenter one of its old filling machines. “I pretty much rebuilt the machine and we were able to get some new parts and things for it and start using it again,” he said.
Working between his classes, research, and supervision of graduate students, it took about a year to rebuild the machine, Boeneke said.
Hay said the AgCenter plans to begin bottling pints in the near future.
 
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