This symposium is the second event to be hosted by the ADSA Dairy Foods Division International Partnership Program (IPP). The IPP arose out of a 2015 strategic initiative of the ADSA board of directors to strengthen the ADSA community for our international members. The Program seeks to accomplish this by partnering with outstanding international dairy research organizations to provide them with a venue to showcase a concentration of their work at our North American Annual Meetings. An equally important objective is to give our North American dairy scientists direct access to these overseas colleagues to facilitate personal connections, collaborations, the sharing of ideas, and a genuine sense of community and collegiality across international lines. The first international organization to collaborate with ADSA under the IPP has been the Teagasc-Moorepark Food Research Center in Ireland. In 2017, the IPP sponsored the Teagasc-Moorepark/University College Cork Cheese Symposium, which was held at the ADSA Annual Meeting and funded jointly by ADSA, Teagasc-Moorepark and University College Cork. Building on the success of the 2017 Cheese Symposium, ADSA and Teagasc-Moorepark are now strengthening their partnership by again jointly funding a day long Symposium which moves beyond cheese science into areas of animal diet and feeding regimen and how they affect dairy product quality, and nutrition and health aspects of dairy foods, areas that are of intense interest to dairy scientists worldwide. As this partnership continues to grow, new opportunities to cooperate, such as through IPP support of short-term PhD student international exchange visits, are beginning to be explored. Beyond this, the resounding success of this first partner experience has provided the IPP with a solid foundation to seek a second outstanding international research organization to join Teagasc-Moorepark to become a founding member of the IPP. Toward that end, efforts are underway to recruit a new partner with the goal of co-sponsoring an IPP Symposium event at the 2020 ADSA Annual Meeting.