After 28 years with the National Milk Producers Federation, Chris Galen is retiring. Most recently, Galen was the senior vice president of member services and governance. He also serves as the executive director of the American Butter Institute. Previously, Galen was the communications lead for National Milk. When he joined the organization in 1997, the dairy industry was undergoing federal order reform. “At that time in the federal wars, a lot of people thought, this will be the last big dairy battle. This will be the last battle over federal orders. The program’s just too anachronistic and we’re fighting a battle with swords and with horses and the cavalry, and it won’t be applicable in the 21st century. And yet here we are with what happened last year. We updated the federal order system and it’s still basically the same program that we were updating back in 1998 and ’99.” In Galen’s words, history doesn’t rhyme, but it echoes, meaning there have been many recurring issues in the long history of the U.S. dairy industry. Galen’s retirement takes effect at the end of the month.
