Our 2021 Member Meeting was a success.
WASCA’s first-ever online membership meeting was held on Friday, January 29, with 24 attendees joining us on Zoom.
During the meeting, we introduced three new members of WASCA’s Board of Directors (welcome Jessica Gigot, John Haugen, and Lucas King!) and the board’s president for 2021, Meghan McKenna. Meghan led us through an overview of the FDA’s proposed FSMA rule change requiring extra traceability recording. Our committee chairs reported updates from 2020 and goals for 2021. I reminded cheesemakers to take the education committee’s COVID-19 survey, gave a sneak preview of our Washington cheese map, and announced the WASCA website’s new Cheesemaker Classifieds. Finally, Dr. Gigi Berardi gave a lively presentation about the opportunities facing the cheese industry now. An image-light copy of her PowerPoint presentation is available here.
Thank you to everyone who took time out of their busy Friday morning to attend! If you were not able to make it last week, a recording of the meeting is online so you can watch it at your leisure. Since this was WASCA’s first Zoom meeting, we created a brief experience survey for everyone to fill out after attending or watching. Your feedback will help us plan future online events.
2021 is going to be an exciting year for WASCA. If you haven’t already, now is the time to join or renew your membership. Together we can accomplish our goals to serve our cheesemakers and our community of cheese lovers!
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Courtney C. Johnson, PhD, ACS CCP
Executive Director, Washington State Cheesemakers Association