Meeting: June 17 at Barred Owl Creamery

Posted on June 4, 2013June 17, 2013 by President

Our June meeting took place in Whitefield at Barred Owl Creamery on Monday, June 17th from 10am to 2pm. We had a long discussion about marketing focus for the Cheese Guild moving forward. We invited a representative to the Maine Dairy Promotion Board to explain how they focus on promoting Maine dairy products, and to offer comments on the Guild’s experiences from the past and ideas for the future. A couple of key questions came up:

–Who are are present customers? How do we reach them?
–How do we reach other customers?

We discussed work that is needed on the Guild web site, on our printed materials, as well as in participating in events around that state that would benefit from adding cheese makers, as well as creating our own Guild events similar to the Open Creamery Day in October, and possibly resurrecting our Maine Cheese Festival event.

Please post your ideas on this issue here to continue this conversation.

Workshops 2013: Magical Microbiolgical Mystery Tour

Posted on May 2, 2013August 30, 2014 by President

This is a lecture
May 6 (Monday), 2013 from 11am to 3pm
Location: Pineland Farms Creamery, New Gloucester, ME

DIRECTIONS (link to PDF document):
http://www.pinelandfarms.org/pdf/Pineland-Farms-Campus-Map.pdf

Building # 19 on the map.

Have you ever wondered what turns a bland lump of salty curd into the amazing diversity of flavors, aromas, and appearances exhibited by the hundreds (if not thousands) of cheese varieties? More often than not these characteristics are initiated and controlled by organisms populating the surfaces of each cheese. Given that, how much do we know about what is happening on the cheese rind? Not much, it turns out. Cheesemakers *think* they know what happens when this mold is added, or a cheese is put into that cave, but microbiologists at Harvard’s FAS Center of Systems Biology have been testing these assumptions and finding that the cheese surface is a much more diverse environment than we could ever have imagined, involving some “usual suspects” as well as utterly alien influences.

This year the Guild has been able to schedule a member of the FAS lab, Benjamine Wolfe (who has worked with the Cheese Nun to figure out the secret lives of Geotrichum candidum) to visit Maine and update us on their research and findings as part of our May meeting to help us better understand our own aging situation, causes, and effects.

COST: This lecture is FREE to Maine Cheese Guild members. Non-members will pay $25 at the door, and their lecture fee will include membership in the Maine Cheese Guild.

Food Safety Exemption Legislation in 2013

Posted on May 1, 2013August 7, 2013 by President

UPDATE July 8: Governor LePage vetos LD1282 and sends it back to the Legislature.

UPDATE July 9: Maine Senate does not override the veto.

Just as was the case in the 2011 state legislative session, several bills have been introduced that would exempt certain farms in Maine (including dairy farms and processors) in certain situations from state licensing requirements and food safety regulation. Two of these bills are now up for public comment before the legislature’s Ag Committee, scheduled for Tuesday, May 7th:

LD 1282 An Act to Help Farmers in Selling Raw Milk and Homemade Food Products

and,

LD 1287 An Act to Deregulate Face-to-Face Transactions Between the Public and Small Farms and Small Food Producers.

In 2011 the Guild published our Quality Statement to emphasis that we do not support local ordinances that would exempt commercial dairy processors from state regulations. This year the Guild presented testimony to the committee on Tuesday, May 7th. About 20 people spoke in favor of the bills; I was one of two who spoke to oppose them. Several, including the Dept. of Ag spoke neither in favor or opposed but they did offer amendments for the committee to consider.

The overwhelming sense I got from the supporters testimony is that there is no middle ground between small Maine farmers forced to sell their locally produced food illegally, versus the giant multinational corporations who want to control the food supply. It was as if all 70+ of the currently state licensed cheese producers in Maine did not exist. Or, if they did exist, they were in league with Hannaford and Nestle. It was such a disturbing feeling to sit in the midst of people painting me with a tar brush that I let it get to me, and during my presentation I needed to turn to the supporters and remind them that “I am one of you.” The story they told of being a struggling small farmer and food producer in the state was also MY story. But they hissed back at me when I pointed that out, and one person shouted back, “no, you’re with them.”

Regarding the bill to support unlicensed sales of raw milk, supporter after supporter asserted that it was NOT POSSIBLE today, in Maine, to legally sell raw milk.

I will try to keep the Guild updated on this topic as soon as I hear officially what the committee has decided with regard to these two bills. No matter what, the full legislature will still need to vote on them, so please educate your local legislator.

–Eric Rector
President, Maine Cheese Guild