Mentorship, marketing, and more
These are some of the issues that came up again and again during the American Cheese Society conference last week in Vermont.
Values: Developments such as cloning, biotechnology, and GM foods are further widening the divide between large- and small-scale agriculture. Environmental stewardship, social responsibility, fair trade, and humane treatment of animals are important to cheesemakers, but also to customers, who are increasingly looking for these things. Stick to your values, says University of Vermont food sciences professor and Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese codirector Paul Kindstedt in the conference's opening session, and "they'll come running."
Safety: In sessions with titles such as "Good Milk Makes Good Cheese," the talk is of animal diet and milk quality, storage, testing, inspectors, contaminants, and above all responsibility. "What could unravel [the success] is a disease outbreak linked to artisan cheese," says Catherine Donnelly. "How you combat that is education. Some sectors wait for the government to regulate them. That doesn't work, and [cheesemakers] get that."
Mentorship: Passing along knowledge to new cheesemakers is a priority. "So much is done by touch, feel, and sight," says Rachel Cohen of Tomales Bay Foods, the distribution arm for Cowgirl Creamery in California. "You can't get it from a book." She is one of the many younger attendees at this year's conference. "If we're the next guard," she says, "we're well taught."
Growth: "A lot of people have an interest in expanding," says Vermont Butter & Cheese Company co-owner Allison Hooper, president of the ACS and cochair of the event. "What we've tried to do with this conference is give cheesemakers and retailers real tools, real stories they can apply to their business. . . . They have to be exposed to the technical stuff. Marketing expectations are huge. You can't continue with naivete -- I'll just milk a few animals, have a recipe, make cheese, and everything will be great."
-- DEVRA FIRST 