At the last meeting in the FACE-network at the beginning of October, Swedish Kerstin Jürss was elected new chairperson of the European network for farm and artisan cheeses and dairy producers.
Kerstin Jürss has been running a dairy together with her husband Claes Jürss in Södermanland for 18 years. Together they create award-winning quality cheeses from local milk. Before that, Kerstin worked 12 years at JILU, Jämtland County Institute for Rural Development. She has also been chairperson of Sweden’s Gårdsmejerister for many years, where she has pushed many important issues for the small-scale dairies.
– One of the issues I really want to work on is to gain more countries as members of the network, Kerstin says at Sverige’s gårdsmejeristers Facebook site
The FACE-network started in 2013. It is an European network of national associations representing farmhouse and artisan cheesemakers. It has 19 full members (producer’s associations) from 16 different European countries. About 4000 producers are represented.
The network cooperates in various areas with common interests such as regulation, preservation of traditional knowledge, difficulties for small-scale dairies and the need for flexibility in the application of legislation and exchange of experience.
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