Farmhouse and Artisan Cheese and dairy producers’ European network
Budget
€10 — €0
EP Access
0
accredited persons
Staff
2
0.35 FTE
EU Grants
None
Mission & Goals
The association FACEnetwork (Farmhouse and Artisan Cheese and dairy producers’ European network) represents farmhouse and artisan dairies and cheese houses sector at a European scale. The articles of the association were officially registered in February 2013 but the network started in 2009. It aims at representing and defending the interests of the farmhouse and artisan cheese and dairy sector, which is composed of businesses processing milk from cow, goat, buffalo and sheep, at a small-scale, and mostly, in the following two types of premises: - "Farmhouse" premises, which belong to farms and which process milk from at least the majority of their own livestock according to traditional methods - "Artisan" premises, which collect milk from local farmers and process it in small structures according to traditional methods In both cases, they generally enter in the definition of “microenterprises”, and are oftentimes family businesses.
EU Legislative Interests
FACEnetwork notably works on food safety, food labelling and presentation, food legislation, all this, when it concerns farmhouse and artisan cheese and dairy products. We also are interested by issues on animal health and welfare and more generally speaking, on biodiversity. Since 2014, FACEnetwork is member of two of the DG Agri’s Civil Dialogue Groups: "Animal Production" group and "Quality & Promotion". In both groups, it participated to topics related to “nutritional labelling” and to “labelling of origin or place of provenance of the ingredients”.
Communication Activities
One of FACEnetwork’s main area of work is on the issue of food safety. During the last years, FACEnetwork has gained a very good expertise in this topic by working on the elaboration of a European Guide for Good Hygiene Practices (GGHP) for farmhouse and artisan cheese and dairy producers. This project was funded by the European Commission, and it resulted in a Community guide pursuant to article 9 of Regulation (EC) N°852/2004 on the hygiene foodstuffs. This Guide was officially endorsed by the Standing Committee PAFF on 13th December 2016 and is now published on the European Commission website, on the DG Health and Food Safety pages: http://ec.europa.eu/food/safety/biosafety/food_hygiene/guidance FACEnetwork organises annual meetings in different countries with a congres and farm visits. The topic varies each time, e.g. raw milk cheese, mountain cheese, gastronomy and marketing. FACEnetwork issues a bi-monthly newsletter with news about the association and its members, information about publications, projects and events.
Interests Represented
Promotes their own interests or the collective interests of their members
Organisation Members
All the organisations members of FACEnetwork are listed and described on the following webpage: https://www.face-network.eu/members
Commissioner Meetings
No recorded meetings with EU commissioners.