Farmhouse and Artisan Cheese and dairy producers’ European network
FACEnetwork
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.
ID: 334837913491-16
Lobbying Activity
Response to Generational renewal in agriculture
11 Jul 2025
The current CAP structure does not incentivise farm succession and new entrants in the small-scale systems enough. Despite the redistributive payments, the current CAP budget for young farmers is very small. To combat this, young farmers should get a higher payment per hectare. But more important, when CAP funds target more on labour units than a payment per hectare, it would become more attractive to take over or start a farm. A labour based support metric would improve the generational renewal. Income support should reflect labour intensity and farm diversification, not just land area or volume. We therefore propose a labour-based support metric: support per full-time equivalent (FTE) rather than per hectare. This should include niche-production and real time estimates, not those coming from large-scale primary production. In addition to this, in order to encourage small scale producers to employ people in order to build an economic and social sustainable business, the first 5 FTEs should be more supported. We also suggest a multi-functionality bonus for farms that combine livestock production with on farm food processing, ecosystem services, education, or social care. We suggest CAP-funded advisory services tailored to small-scale, value-added producers. Including operational support for regional, national and European for their associations. These organisations can play an important role in the process of generational renewal.
Read full responseResponse to Update of the food safety criterion regarding Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat foods
8 May 2024
FACEnetwork (www.face-network.eu), represents farmhouse and artisan cheese and dairy producers in Europe. We welcome the opportunity to provide comments to this consultation. The control of Listeria is very import for public health. The producer fulfils its responsibility by adhering to HACCP based principles, GHP, including shelf-life studies and environmental testing. The producer takes the appropriate measures to guarantee the safety of the product and establishes clear labelling, to inform their customers on how to handle the product before it leaves their immediate control. How the product is handled (e.g. correct storage temperature, preventing cross-contamination) is not under the control of the producer. Furthermore, we know that listeria contamination can come from the environment and then occur after the product has left the control of the producer due to eventual poor hygiene practices of a retailer or other party. To our understanding, the proposed change of the legislation: - makes the producer responsible for mistreatment of a product even though it is not under their control anymore - makes the producer responsible to ensure the absence of Listeria during the whole shelf life duration and adding then extra cost of analyses and extra work to validate their best before date - removes legal limit that the producer can refer to in case of an incident - may lead to recalls in a situation where there is no real danger for public health, thus resulting in food waste and extra cost We consider all these consequences very undesirable. We therefore advocate to not change the wording of 2073/2005 as proposed.
Read full responseResponse to Updating the legislation related to the hygiene rules for products of animal origin
25 May 2023
Please find attached the feedback of FACEnetwork.
Read full responseResponse to Sustainable food system – setting up an EU framework
26 Oct 2021
Our organization FACEnetwork (Farmhouse and Artisan Cheese and dairy producers’ European network) aims to represent and defend the interests of farmhouse and artisan cheese and dairy producers on European level.
We are very interested in this new initiative of the European Commission aiming to set up a framework on “Sustainable food systems”. We trust that a clear European food policy could help the development of food systems more in line with the Sustainable Development Goals defined at European and international levels. And we think that the plans proposed in the document of Inception Impact Assessment (IIA) are relevant.
However, although we agree with the orientation and the working plans proposed by the European Commission, we find that most of the published information in the framework of the Farm to fork strategy mainly highlights only two examples of sustainable food systems, which are: fruits and vegetable sector (for the health benefits of a plant-based diet) and organic production (for the health and environmental advantages). This makes forget the other food systems that are also highly sustainable, like farmhouse and artisanal food production.
Given all its sustainable characteristics, farmhouse and artisanal food production should be included among the sustainable food sectors highlighted in the documents published by the European Commission, just like fruits and vegetable production and organic farming. Our sector could even be used as a concrete example of a sector already meeting many criteria of “sustainable food systems”, in order to help the reflection on the different options presented in part B of the IIA document (“objectives and policy options”)
Next to that, we would like to contribute to the European Commission’s initiative with more proposals regarding the modalities of stakeholders consultation and sustainable lablelling. Please read our position paper attached.
Read full responseResponse to Contingency plan for ensuring food supply and food security
29 Dec 2020
Our organisation FACEnetwork is the “Farmhouse and Artisan Cheese and dairy producers’ European network”. It aims to represent and defend the interests of small scale dairy producers on a European level. To date, it is composed of 19 producers’ organisations, based in 16 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Farmhouse cheese and dairy producers are farmers who process milk from their own livestock according to traditional methods, and artisan cheese and dairy producers are dairy makers who collect milk from local farms and process it according to traditional methods. Most of our members are family enterprises. We estimate the sector at 40.000 farmhouse and artisan cheese dairies all over Europe, which create more than 120.000 direct jobs based in rural and depopulated areas.
Covid-19 crisis showed that the farmhouse and artisanal sector is strategic
The crisis showed that our sector is very resilient because each operator depends and impacts mainly his local area. Indeed, our dairies did not suffer from sourcing problems since their raw material (basically, milk) is produced on site or very locally. Moreover, the majority of our producers market their products, at least partially, through direct or very short supply chains. They are not dependent of transports’ chains or distributors.
Moreover, during the crisis, we saw that a lot of consumers were asking for "artisan and proximity food”, that they consider healthier, and with less impact on the environment than food from big industries.
That is why it is strategic for Europe to maintain and even develop the farmhouse and artisanal food sector, in normal times and also in times of crisis.
In case of future crisis, farmer markets should stay open
In time of crisis, the restrictions of movements, and the problems in transports chains make it necessary to facilitate the access to artisan products marketed directly.
That is why the issue of farmer markets is very important and should be part of the contingency plan. While at the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis most European countries did close their markets, today they all re-opened them, and they generally agree that it is no more risky, with regard to the spread of the coronavirus, to buy in a market than in a supermarket. Indeed:
- being outdoors is less risky than being in a group in a closed room;
- being served by a single salesperson who washes his hands between each customer, as is always the case in the market for dairy products, offers more security than helping oneself on self-service shelves where products have been handled by many other people before.
- using only one's own basket and not a trolley already used by others before one's own is also a good practice that market customers are accustomed to.
In time of crisis, the artisanal sector needs to be more visible to the consumers
For the same reasons already detailed, during crisis, the consumers prefer artisan products and are ready to go to farmer markets or even to farms to buy food directly from them.
That is why we propose to include in the contingency plan actions that would help farmers and artisans to become more visible for more consumers. These can be for example specific collective promotion campaigns composed of publicity, marketing, and promotional events.
The European Promotion Program from the Chafea: “Enjoy! It’s from Europe”, could be a good tool for that, provided that its conditions are changed to be adapted to our size of businesses and our type of organisations. Indeed, as it stands, the lack of legal certainty and the high level of money that each project is expected to deal with, make it difficult for our sector to participate to this Chafea programme.
Read full responseResponse to Farm to Fork Strategy
16 Mar 2020
FACEnetwork is the Farmhouse and Artisan Cheese and dairy producers’ European network (FACEnetwork). It is an association which aims to represent and defend the interests of farmhouse and artisan cheese and dairy producers on a national and European level.
Please read attached our contribution to the Farm to Fork strategy.
Read full response