Maine Chamber Annual Dinner – 11/15

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Last year Eric represented us at the Taste of Maine reception in DC. The Maine Chamber is replicating that model at the annual Maine Chamber Annual Dinner meeting on November 15th. Eric mentioned this in his post from last month’s meeting.

Here are the highlights of the event:

Don’t Miss the Chamber’s Annual Dinner with featured Guest U.S. Senator Angus S. King, Jr.

Join us on November 15th for the Maine State Chamber of Commerce’s 2013 Annual Awards Dinner – “Mr. King Goes
to Washington: An Independent’s Perspective on his First Year.”

They will be showcasing Maine foods at the reception and have invited us to participate. I will be there with my cheese and will represent the Guild. If anyone wants to donate cheese to the table and/or join me at the event, please let me know. The ideal time to bring cheese to include for the event is the annual meeitng on Monday, the 11th.

Hope to see everyone on Monday!!

Cathe
State of Maine Cheese

Meeting: November 11th in Rockport

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On November 11th we held our Annual Meeting at the State of Maine Cheese Co. facility on Route 1 in Rockport.

Caitlin Hunter (Appleton Creamery) and Heather Donahue (Balfour Farm) were both re-elected to a seat on the Guild Board. Caitlin stepped down from her duties of Secretary of the organization, and Heather was nominated and then voted to replace Caitlin as Secretary.

We reviewed the State of the Guild, including its finances, and we made plans for the upcoming year in many areas: new workshops planned for the Spring (advanced workshops, as well as others focused on beginners and those interested in getting licensed to sell cheese), web site improvements, changes to the delivery of our newsletter, possible legislative action, the formation of an Events Committee, fundraising ideas, and many other things. We ALSO got to taste a lot of cheeses that were brought in for feedback!

It was a long meeting, but VERY productive. Thanks to everyone who attended.

It’s Coming! FSMA Decoded So Far…

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US Food and Drug AdministrationDuring a salmonella outbreak of 2008 and 2009 nine people died, 166 were hospitalized and more than 700 fell ill. Authorities ultimately traced the contamination of Salmonella Typhimurium back to peanut products manufactured in a Texas plant owned by the Peanut Corporation of America. According to the US CDC an estimated 48 million people each year are affected by food borne illnesses resulting in over 100,000 hospitalization and 3,000 deaths. In this one case, however, there were several factors that caught the general public’s attention:

  • Illnesses were caused all over the US without apparent patterns at first;
  • People died from exposure in nursing homes and other medical facilities;
  • Many different products across different company’s products and brands were found to be contaminated, both commercial and institutional;
  • Ultimately the media found that the peanut processing plant had been operating legally in Texas without EVER having been inspected by state or federal food safety organizations.

As a result of the tremendous publicity and outrage of this embarrassing outbreak a White House Food Safety Working Group was formed to investigate this specific failure in the US food safety network. The result was the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) passed by Congress and to be implemented by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
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