Cheese and Dairy Produce

Chair of Judges: Tiffany Beer, Consultant, Food Production

Tiffany Beer is a food technologist with a background in food quality and safety, as well as product development and labelling. Her food expertise includes working with dairy products, ready-to-eat meals, baked goods, confectionery, frozen products and honey. Tiffany works alongside small and medium sized food businesses, ensuring compliance with regulatory and customer requirements.

The Sydney Royal Cheese & Dairy Show engages respected industry professionals and judges and firmly endorses the development of future judges with a strong succession plan through Associate Judges.

All Judges involved in the Show have completed an accredited sensory training course. Judging panels of three to five Judges are constituted from a combination of the following:

• Manufacturers and technologists from industry

• Product users

• Product retailers

• Other specialist and industry judges
  
  

Associate Judging

The Committee has embarked on a path of growing the pool of Judges available and have adopted a rotation policy to refresh the judging panels and give them a different dynamic and capture potential new judges coming through the industry and therefore endorses the development of future judges by offering Associate Judging positions.

Conducted by the Sydney Royal Cheese & Dairy Produce Show judging panel, medals are determined by Judges using the following point scale:

• Gold medal for outstanding Exhibits gaining 18pts and over;

• Silver medal for excellent Exhibits gaining 17pts but fewer than 18pts;

• Bronze medal for quality Exhibits gaining 16pts but fewer than 17pts.

Stewards play a valuable part in the judging of each competition and ensure the day runs smoothly through the coordination and preparation of exhibits for Judges. Stewarding is a fantastic way of leaning more about the industry, competitions and the judging process, with opportunities to develop into Associate Judge and Judge roles in the future.

This class is judged using the same criteria as other classes, however, where appropriate we do use a larger number of judges to examine the product and provide expert comments back to the exhibitor. Those criteria are Flavour, Body and Texture, and Appearance.

Should the manufacturer ask us to look at any additional aspects of the product we can do that, as we have a large pool of expert judges with varied backgrounds and products knowledge.

All exhibitors to the Sydney Royal Cheese and Dairy Produce Show receive feedback on their products and they may contact the Chair of Judges to discuss their exhibit.

The criteria covers all aspects of the product from the packaging and product presentation right through to its consumption. For products that require further preparation before consumption, eg. cooking, we do conduct that step so that the product is judged as it would be by the end consumer.