At our last meeting (May 7th at Fuzzy Udder Creamery in Unity) we had a guest join our group — G. W. Martin, of Montville, who had worked to get his town to adopt the “Food Sovereignty Ordinance” that several other towns in Maine have passed in the last few years. He also marched on the State House on April 17th in support of “Farmer Brown” who is being prosecuted for selling unlicensed dairy products to the public. Martin had been invited to the Guild meeting by Jessie Dowling of Fuzzy Udder to try to provide some perspective to the Guild about the concern of food producers and farmers who feel that state licensing is an impediment to supporting their local communities by producing food for their neighbors.
Even though the discussion was not on the agenda for the meeting, there was a lot of interest expressed by the group to hear from Martin about his perspective, as well as to educate Martin about why the Guild has adopted a Quality Statement insisting that state licensing be the minimum level of oversight for any commercial cheese maker in Maine to insure the quality of their products.
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Eric Rector and Heather Donahue both gave excellent presentations about their experiences at the recent American Cheese Society meeting and Traktec’s Donna Murray was on hand to tell us about their Maine -based label manufacturing company.
