history of soy yogurt, soy acidophilus milk and other ... - SoyInfo Center

of soymilk equipment sale. It was never IPC’s focus to set
up people with the technology to be in competition with IPC,
but it was IPC’s goal to set up people to be in partnership
with IPC.
Jerry Duncan came to IPC from the dairy industry. He
did some consulting for IPC as early as 1995 and he became
president of the company sometime in early 1997. Loren
appointed him president. He is presently no longer with IPC;
instead he is involved with a food brokerage company, and
he is still a consultant. He was one of the vice-presidents of
Dairyworld Foods, and he can be very gruff and hard to deal
with–though he is a nice person when you get to know him;
his bark is much worse than his bite.
Vesanto Melina, who lives in Langley, BC, quite close
to the factory, worked for IPC as a consultant several days a
week for a little more than a year before it closed. She looked
after consumer relations, did trade shows, developed packets
of recipe cards, and recommended SoNice in her books
on vegetarian cookery. She and Dusty are good friends.
Address: Vice-president Operations, International ProSoya
Corp., 312-19292 60th Ave., Surrey (Vancouver), BC, V3S
8E5 Canada. Phone: 604-541-8633.
1183. Conquergood, George. 1999. How Rajedra (“Raj”)
Gupta got into the soymilk business (Interview). SoyaScan
Notes. May 10. Conducted by William Shurtleff of Soyfoods
Center.
• Summary: Raj is a research scientist and a physicist. He
wanted to come up with something to feed hungry and
starving people in Third World Countries. His native country
is India and hunger has long been a major problem in India;
he wanted to do something for his people. He focused on
developing a low-cost protein source that was palatable.
“He knew that soy was superior food, but people in Indian
didn’t like the taste.” He wanted to develop good-tasting
alternatives to cow’s milk and paneer (fresh dairy cheese),
which were quite expensive in India and came from the Holy
Cow. Once he had a good soymilk, he wanted to use it as the
base of puddings, yogurts, and other such foods which would
be popular in India.
Raj went about this research scientifi cally, trying to
understand what was causing the problem. He found that
the oxidation of lipoxygenase enzyme led to off-fl avors. To
control that, he developed the concept and process of airless
cold grinding. An associate of his, Grant Wood, who worked
for the research council under him in the same department, is
the person who actually designed the original SoyaCow.
Theoretically Raj was working in his home kitchen. But
he was a government employee, working for the National
Research of Canada, a huge organization in Ottawa. As
a professor of physics, he had access to good scientifi c
laboratories–but physics labs rather than food labs. He
and Grant Wood did most of this work on their own time.
He actually got a Canada Council award for designing the
HISTORY OF SOY YOGURT & CULTURED SOYMILK 457
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grinder.
Raj fi led for two patents on his cold grind airless
process. These patents are owned by a U.S. company,
Micronics, in partnership with his brother, who is a
university professor in the United States.
Note: According to Soyfoods Center records, in March
1985 Raj and his wife, Rashmi, applied for a Canadian
patent titled “Process for making soymilk with no beany
fl avor” (No. 477,902). In 1986, Raj, his wife, and one
other Gupta fi led an international patent application titled
“Food processing in oxygen-free environment” [Soymilk].
In April 1987 they fi led for a U.S. equipment patent titled
“Equipment for making no-beany fl avor soymilk.” They
assigned the rights to ProSoya Corp. (Maryland Heights,
Missouri).
In 1992, when George fi rst met Raj in Ottawa, Raj was
using his SoyaCow SC20 to make both soymilk and tofu.
He even had a little tofu forming box that he shipped with
each SoyaCow. The box would form one batch of soymilk
from the SC20 into tofu. A fi lter press pressed the okara.
You would coagulate the soymilk to make tofu. Today the
SoyaCow SC20 is being made in both Russia and India.
Frank Daller, who was originally in media in Canada,
was an important early fi gure in ProSoya. Before he met Raj,
he was working with a charitable organization in Canada
(probably Plenty Canada, or perhaps Child Haven). Frank
met Raj shortly before George did, when Raj was busy
making his fi rst SC20s. Plenty had an SC20 at The Farm
in Canada, and today Plenty has several SC20s in projects
operating worldwide. The two main organizations that Raj
started working with through a CIDA grant he obtained were
Child Haven and Plenty. Frank Daller approached Raj and
convinced Raj that he should become the president of the
company–the man in charge of daily affairs at the offi ce. He
invested a little bit of money; with Raj, if you invest a little
bit of money, you can do anything.
In early 1996, Frank Daller left ProSoya and set up
his own charitable organization. One advantage of such a
corporation is that it is not required to pay any taxes. He
got a lot of cash by selling the shares he owned back to
ProSoya and IPC. More importantly, he had rights to stock
options–which he also sold. Somehow Frank and Loren
Broten wound up in some diffi culty. Today Frank is the
president of Daller & Co. Ltd. in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
He sells soymilk and tofu processing equipment. Address:
Vice-president Operations, International ProSoya Corp., 312-
19292 60th Ave., Surrey (Vancouver), BC, V3S 8E5 Canada.
Phone: 604-541-8633.
1184. Khodorych, Alexei. 1999. [A helpful bean].
Kommersant-Dengi (Businessman-Money; Moscow) No. 19.
p. 21-27. May 19. [Rus]*
• Summary: This article is about the soyfood products
business and SoyaCows in Russia. Contents: Potential