Are Your October Events On the American Cheese Month Online Calendar? 

American Cheese Month is well underway, and ACS is thrilled with the number of events taking place around the country this year. To give us an accurate count of events taking place this October, please remember to add your October events (even if they have already taken place) to the American Cheese Month calendar. Adding your events is easy: simply click here!   

The Food Safety Modernization Act includes new registration requirements for members of the food industry. These new requirements affect all food facilities -- including those that had previously registered with the FDA -- that export or distribute food in the United States. Registration was set to begin on October 1, 2012 and end on December 31, 2012. However, according to FDA officials in a recent conference call in which ACS participated, the FDA is experiencing a "complicated delay," and registration is not currently available. It is still unclear when registration will begin, or if the closing date will be extended past the original December 31 deadline.

Note that once registration does begin, the FDA requires that all food facilities register, even if they have previously registered. This includes farms and retailers. By registering, an organization indicates to the FDA that it has a food safety plan, and is doing everything possible to prevent contaminated food or feed from entering the supply chain. Registration will need to be updated every 2 years.  

Stay informed by visiting the FDA's website and continuing to read our monthly CheeseBytes newsletter for the latest updates. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the FDA directly, or contact ACS.  

Also, please remember that the FDA has budgeted to inspect 246 artisan cheesemaking facilities in its new fiscal year, which began October 1. See the sidebar at upper left for more information about these plans.

Through ACS's ongoing alliance with the National Association for Specialty Food Trade (NASFT), two valuable resource manuals have been made available to ACS members at a substantial discount -- 80% off. To learn more about these manuals and to take advantage of the discount price of $40 each (regular price $200 each), visit the NASFT website and use discount code ACS12.

• The NASFT Traceability Manual provides critical information on product tracking for domestic specialty food producers under the Bioterrorism Act, examining the "how-to" steps of tracing a product's origin one step back (incoming product) and one step forward (outgoing product) as well as options for building your own simple system and sample forms.  

• The NASFT Recall Manual (link to below) is the first of its kind for the specialty food industry providing a thorough primer on food safety and product recalls in the specialty food industry.

If you have any questions about this offer, please contact [email protected].

This past weekend, ACS staff and volunteers sampled cheese to 49,000 beer enthusiasts at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) in Denver. GABF, which is the largest ticketed beer event in the country, played host to approximately 580 breweries -- and for the third year in a row, ACS served as the event's exclusive artisan cheese partner. We sampled over 70 different cheeses donated from 38 cheesemakers, totaling over 650 pounds of cheese.  

Excited beer lovers waited in line for an opportunity to taste cheeses made by ACS member-cheesemakers. Soft, hard, fresh, and aged cheeses were paired with a variety of beers that complemented their flavors and aromas. In addition to running the booth, the ACS team also assisted in pairing cheesemakers with regional brewpubs in the new GABF Brewpub Pavilion. 

Also at GABF, ACS Certified Cheese Professional™ Suzanne Wolcott paired four cheeses with craft beers in a video that will soon be featured on craftbeer.com. See a photo from the video shoot, and see if you can guess which cheeses she used in the pairings! Certified Cheese Professional™ Michael Landis also participated in GABF, hosting a beer and cheese pairing session featuring Uinta Brewing Company beers with five cheeses from ACS members. Along many talented volunteers, we were also joined by Certified Cheese Professional™ John Balmer of Whole Foods Market, who assisted with the preparation and serving of our fabulous selection of cheeses.  

ACS would like to thank all of the cheesemakers and specialty food producers who donated products to GABF. We are also incredibly grateful for the support of our many volunteers for making GABF a successful and enjoyable event -- along with an incredible way to expose people to ACS and its members' products.   

Blue cheeses come in a range of sizes and formats, from 10-ounce wheels of Saga Baby Blue to the 25-pound Gorgonzola Dolce. What impact does cheese size and shape have on the development of blue veining? In this interview with San Francisco Chronicle cheese columnist Janet Fletcher, consultant Neville McNaughton of CheezSorce explores some of these technical issues.

Q: Can blue cheese be made in any size?

A: There are no short answers to a question like that. You have to style the cultures to fit the needs. How is Gorgonzola Dolce able to be as big as it is, to have the dimensions it has? Because they choose less aggressive molds and starter cultures. When you don't have the inhibitory effect of salt in a large format, you need to have mild blue cultures.

Q: A little more, please, on that relationship between salting and format?

I'm a fan of Fourme d'Ambert so let's look at that. It's about 120 millimeters (4.75 inches) in diameter, so the distance the salt has to travel is less than 3 inches. Even Danish Blue doesn't have more than 3 inches to the center...(read more!)