Fonterra on lookout for gold-medal sniffers

Fonterra is looking for Olympic-standard tastebuds for evaluation of fats, dairy proteins, milk powders and the occasional piece of cheese.

Smokers and garlic addicts need not apply, the Australian newspaper reported yesterday.

Fonterra is recruiting 15 new "sensory panellists" to taste and smell dairy ingredients and products at its new research centre in Melbourne.

Brand innovation director David Hughes said the dairy exporter already had more than 50 sensory panellists on staff in New Zealand, tasting and smelling ingredients in dairy products to ensure they appealed to customers or were bland enough not to influence the product's taste and smell.

"Our trained panellists are so attuned to minor differences in the total sensory perception of products, whether they are existing products or new ones, that they give us more information and insight than we could possibly get from electronic instruments."

Panellists taste fresh cultured products, new cheeses, powders mixed into drinkable solutions, proteins and colostrum tablets, as well as products that are quite unpleasant in their pure form, such as fats, hydrolysates, partially digested milk protein and highly refined proteins.

Applicants will go through a practical selection process of tasting and sniffing to see "if they get it", followed by six months' training to analyse and rate products on a range of attributes, rather than just whether they like or dislike what they're eating.

Up to 10 samples an hour can be tasted and rated on attributes such as creamy aroma, cooked aroma, sweetness, bitterness, caramel taste, oxidisation, metallic taste and powderiness.

- NZPA