Farmstead Cheese Safety Risk Reduction

The Farmstead Cheese Risk Reduction Project is moving into the pilot project phase. During February-March, 2007 around seventy cheesemakers from New England and New York state attended informational seminars about HACCP planning and verification for small-scale artisanal and farmstead cheesemaking. The turnout exceeded expectation, particularly in the New England region. Based on surveys, twenty four cheesemakers have expressed interest in participating in a pilot project for the next two years.

Starting in May-June, 2007 the twenty four cheesemakers will receive training in developing HACCP-type plans for their cheese operations. Participants are commited to their plan development; sampling and testing milk, cheese, and the environment of their creameries to verify that their plans are working, and keeping records of all activities. Peter Dixon, the technical field person for the project will provide the training. Linda Brushett, the cooperative development specialist, will be researching the most effective way to organize the pilot project participants into an association that can administer the verification system and provide training and testing services for new members.

Peter Dixon, dairy foods consultant, Westminster, VT, and Lynda Brushett of the Cooperative Development Institute, Deerfield, MA will work with cheesemakers to develop a “Farmstead Safe Cheese Certification Program” based in HACCP principles and modeled on the well-established and internationally accepted European Union (EU) Directives for risk reduction.
The production of farmstead cheese in the Northeast has grown in the past twenty years from a handful of early innovators to a hundred or more businesses serving markets across the US. While there has been a concurrent growth in opportunities for cheesemakers to learn about the science and craft of cheesemaking, the subject of cheese safety needs to be brought into focus. A project operated by the University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension has developed “Food Safety Plans” for ten farmstead cheesemakers in the Northeast. The “Farmstead Safe Cheese Certification Program” will build on this work to train farmstead cheesemakers to implement cheese safety risk reduction programs and verify that their plans are working by sampling and testing raw milk used for cheesemaking, cheese, and the environment of the creamery.

It is critical to begin this important work now because:

1. “Cheese Safety Risk Reduction” also means “Quality Assurance.” Improved cheesemaking systems produce better cheese, reduce the number of spoiled batches and result in more cheese to sell.
2. More and more cheese buyers are requiring producers to have food safety plans in place before they will buy their products. Being proactive about food safety is part of preparing cheesemakers for the future so that they can maintain existing markets and be able to enter new markets.
3. One mistake can ruin it for everyone in the farmstead cheese micro-industry. Cheese Safety Plans reduce the risk of food-borne illness occurring from farmstead cheese. An effective cooperatively-operated cheese safety program will give cheesemakers confidence that the cheese that they produce is as safe as can be and return the added value of the added effort.
   

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