Cheese Conference: fromager certification
Aug. 9th, 2006 06:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gordonzolaMy first panel was "Fromager* Certification: Update and Next Steps". This was for the hardcore conference-goer, in fact two of my three cheese mentors were in attendance. It’s long been a peeve of mine that there are no professional standards in this business. People can get a job or start a store/restaurant and call themselves whatever they want. I did it too, of course, calling myself a "cheese monger" after I felt I had earned the title. Others may call themselves affineurs, fromager, maitre fromager, whatever sounds fancy but none of it means anything at this point.
On the panel was someone fairly famous for calling himself a maitre fromager. I was very impressed that he had the modesty and good graces to say he wasn’t sure he could pass the test they were proposing for certification. The panel, who’ve been working on this since the last conference, envisioned a three-tiered certification system: Cheese Specialist, Fromager, and Maitre Fromager. There would be a pre-qualifying exam, essay questions, and, for the top certification, an expectation of mastery of fairly obscure cheese knowledge. This was not meant to be a full proposal, just an update with a 5 year time frame for implementation.
I was itching to talk as soon as I saw the outline. The term Fromager was touted as the cheese equivalent of sommelier, something people are used to in fancy restaurants. As long time readers know, I have an aversion to the use of French names for things done in the USA. Not because the French hate our freedom, but because it continues to unnecessarily mystify food.
Take "terroir". It basically means food that has a sense of the place it is made/grown. It tops my list of hated terms because many folks want to import it and use it to market relatively new cheeses. In fact, "terroir’ was the theme for the first ACS conference I attended (in, of all places, Rodent Park, California) . The thing is though, that in France, they are talking about food that grew up together over centuries of relative geographical isolation. There has been cheese, beer, and wine made in, for example, Northern California since the land was stolen from the Indians and Mexicans. While much of it is great, its influence came from elsewhere and, with very few exceptions, it is not geographically original. A given cheese may be quite distinct in flavor, but that has a lot more to do with the skill of the cheese maker than the flora, fauna, and geography of the region.
It’s the equivalent of people who talk about their "old friends". Whether they are referring to people from grade school or people from last year tells you something about the person. The stupid thing is that there are lots of great American cheeses being made. To pretend that we have the history of the French or the Italians, as a cheesemaking nation, is dishonest and makes people rightfully suspect other claims made about taste and quality.
I got to speak towards the end of the Q&A and I praised them on the work they had done over the last year because they really did get a lot of the needs outlined and organized. I think actual certification will encourage people to learn more, and a more educated body of cheese folks will only help the cheese makers. I like the idea having a body of peers evaluate my professional level, depending on what they are evaluating of course. I think it’s possible that professional certification could lead to better pay for some cheese sellers, since watching the way that buyers turn over at every store but ours, the Cheese Board and the Pasta Shop is kind of disheartening.
It’s always more fun to complain so I quickly got to the heart of the matter. If people are serious about supporting local cheesemakers, and comparing North American cheese to European cheese, the title of achievement has to be an English one for use in the US. While I would prefer "Cheese Monger" with degrees of competence, I understand that distributors and some others don’t really fall into that category. But "Fromager" encourages all the pretension that many of us are trying to kill off. It’s just cheese, dude. When I said I would be embarrassed to use that title in our store, other cheese mongers in attendance applauded.
The other major problem with the proposed certification was that there was no requirement for experience. I don’t really see any reason to do a certification unless it’s limited to professionals. I am told that one can get a sommelier certificate by passing a class, and I guess I’d be ok with it on the "Specialist" level as a way for people to get cheese jobs, but it seems like a watering-down of the certification before we’ve even begun. I did say that if the intent was job creation, then they better provide an oral and/or Spanish language option because there are certainly people who could pass the Specialist part of the exam who may not be able to write essays in well-written English.
Hopefully as an oversight, not foreshadowing, the one glaring topic left of any part of the certification was demonstrating safe food handling skills. Heh. Uncomfortable giggle. If you can’t wash your hands, you can’t sell the cheese. It was wonderful recently when a new hire, in his self-evaluation, said that one of the biggest differences between his old store and working with us is how much we wash our hands and how much we clean the counters.
Of course, there is some danger that the certification process is simply a way for people to make money off of the booming cheese industry. The final steps were not outlined, but as much as parts of the American Cheese Society annoy me, they are the most impartial body to oversee this type of professionalization. Though maybe not since, looking at the list of BOD members I see I have professional relationships with 9 out of 16 of them. It’s not like they’d wanna tell me I failed the test. However, a private organization won’t survive long if people don’t pass so there would be a built-in incentive to make the test easier. Flunking people doesn’t exactly lead to good word of mouth.
I think my critiques were on the mark because a lot of other folks came up to me after the panel and said they appreciated my little speech. While the women tended to come up to me at the "networking breaks" all the men waited until we were in the bathroom together. I have never been patted on the back so many times over the course of two days while standing at urinals. Still, as cheese conference bathroom stories go, nothing will top 2001 in Louisville when a certain cheesemonger (not me) waved his penis at a delegation of Italians, saying, "I got your provolone right here!"
*For pronunciation, think of Bob and Doug Mackenzie, "Hey what smells?"
"I think it’s the fromage, eh?"
On the panel was someone fairly famous for calling himself a maitre fromager. I was very impressed that he had the modesty and good graces to say he wasn’t sure he could pass the test they were proposing for certification. The panel, who’ve been working on this since the last conference, envisioned a three-tiered certification system: Cheese Specialist, Fromager, and Maitre Fromager. There would be a pre-qualifying exam, essay questions, and, for the top certification, an expectation of mastery of fairly obscure cheese knowledge. This was not meant to be a full proposal, just an update with a 5 year time frame for implementation.
I was itching to talk as soon as I saw the outline. The term Fromager was touted as the cheese equivalent of sommelier, something people are used to in fancy restaurants. As long time readers know, I have an aversion to the use of French names for things done in the USA. Not because the French hate our freedom, but because it continues to unnecessarily mystify food.
Take "terroir". It basically means food that has a sense of the place it is made/grown. It tops my list of hated terms because many folks want to import it and use it to market relatively new cheeses. In fact, "terroir’ was the theme for the first ACS conference I attended (in, of all places, Rodent Park, California) . The thing is though, that in France, they are talking about food that grew up together over centuries of relative geographical isolation. There has been cheese, beer, and wine made in, for example, Northern California since the land was stolen from the Indians and Mexicans. While much of it is great, its influence came from elsewhere and, with very few exceptions, it is not geographically original. A given cheese may be quite distinct in flavor, but that has a lot more to do with the skill of the cheese maker than the flora, fauna, and geography of the region.
It’s the equivalent of people who talk about their "old friends". Whether they are referring to people from grade school or people from last year tells you something about the person. The stupid thing is that there are lots of great American cheeses being made. To pretend that we have the history of the French or the Italians, as a cheesemaking nation, is dishonest and makes people rightfully suspect other claims made about taste and quality.
I got to speak towards the end of the Q&A and I praised them on the work they had done over the last year because they really did get a lot of the needs outlined and organized. I think actual certification will encourage people to learn more, and a more educated body of cheese folks will only help the cheese makers. I like the idea having a body of peers evaluate my professional level, depending on what they are evaluating of course. I think it’s possible that professional certification could lead to better pay for some cheese sellers, since watching the way that buyers turn over at every store but ours, the Cheese Board and the Pasta Shop is kind of disheartening.
It’s always more fun to complain so I quickly got to the heart of the matter. If people are serious about supporting local cheesemakers, and comparing North American cheese to European cheese, the title of achievement has to be an English one for use in the US. While I would prefer "Cheese Monger" with degrees of competence, I understand that distributors and some others don’t really fall into that category. But "Fromager" encourages all the pretension that many of us are trying to kill off. It’s just cheese, dude. When I said I would be embarrassed to use that title in our store, other cheese mongers in attendance applauded.
The other major problem with the proposed certification was that there was no requirement for experience. I don’t really see any reason to do a certification unless it’s limited to professionals. I am told that one can get a sommelier certificate by passing a class, and I guess I’d be ok with it on the "Specialist" level as a way for people to get cheese jobs, but it seems like a watering-down of the certification before we’ve even begun. I did say that if the intent was job creation, then they better provide an oral and/or Spanish language option because there are certainly people who could pass the Specialist part of the exam who may not be able to write essays in well-written English.
Hopefully as an oversight, not foreshadowing, the one glaring topic left of any part of the certification was demonstrating safe food handling skills. Heh. Uncomfortable giggle. If you can’t wash your hands, you can’t sell the cheese. It was wonderful recently when a new hire, in his self-evaluation, said that one of the biggest differences between his old store and working with us is how much we wash our hands and how much we clean the counters.
Of course, there is some danger that the certification process is simply a way for people to make money off of the booming cheese industry. The final steps were not outlined, but as much as parts of the American Cheese Society annoy me, they are the most impartial body to oversee this type of professionalization. Though maybe not since, looking at the list of BOD members I see I have professional relationships with 9 out of 16 of them. It’s not like they’d wanna tell me I failed the test. However, a private organization won’t survive long if people don’t pass so there would be a built-in incentive to make the test easier. Flunking people doesn’t exactly lead to good word of mouth.
I think my critiques were on the mark because a lot of other folks came up to me after the panel and said they appreciated my little speech. While the women tended to come up to me at the "networking breaks" all the men waited until we were in the bathroom together. I have never been patted on the back so many times over the course of two days while standing at urinals. Still, as cheese conference bathroom stories go, nothing will top 2001 in Louisville when a certain cheesemonger (not me) waved his penis at a delegation of Italians, saying, "I got your provolone right here!"
*For pronunciation, think of Bob and Doug Mackenzie, "Hey what smells?"
"I think it’s the fromage, eh?"
