Two virtual sessions land on the calendar for April 20, one built around allergen disclosure on finished cheese and one built around rennet alternatives, and both are the kind our members tend to ask about the week after rather than the week before — so this year we're getting the notice out early. Both are free, both virtual, and both scheduled for the same afternoon, which means members with a real stake in both subjects have a scheduling decision to make sooner than they'd like.
The allergen disclosure session
This one is aimed at anyone selling finished cheese directly to consumers or through retail accounts, especially members handling nut-adjacent ingredients — think a walnut-crusted rind or a fig-and-almond pairing box — where a labeling gap creates real liability, not just a compliance headache. It's also a timely session: sesame joined the list of major allergens requiring disclosure at the start of this year, and food-safety trade guidance has been reminding processors since that any product already in the supply chain before the new requirement took effect doesn't have to be pulled and relabeled, which has left some retail accounts confused about what's actually on the shelf. The session walks through what has to appear on a label, what counts as adequate allergen warning language, and where members most often get tripped up when a seasonal recipe changes mid-run without anyone updating the label copy to match. If you've changed a recipe since your last label print run, put this one on your calendar before you put anything else there. Trade coverage this week is still tracking how unevenly that requirement has rolled out across smaller processors, which is exactly the gap this session is meant to close for our members.
The rennet alternatives session, and picking one if you can only make one
The second session is aimed squarely at the production side: a comparison of animal, microbial, and fermentation-produced coagulants, with attention to how each behaves differently in a washed-curd or long-aged style. Members who've been asked by a buyer whether their line has a vegetarian-rennet option — a question we're hearing more of this year than last, alongside wider interest in fermentation-derived dairy ingredients generally — will get a straight answer about what actually changes in the vat when you swap coagulants, not just a marketing pitch for one option over another. It's a narrower audience than the allergen session, but for members running a washed-curd line, it's the more consequential hour.
If you only have the bandwidth for one, match it to where your exposure actually sits this quarter: a recipe or packaging change points you toward the allergen session, a coagulant question from a buyer points you toward rennet. If your role touches both — a lot of our smaller-creamery members wear both hats — ask whether someone else on your team can sit in on the other session and swap notes afterward. Both webinars record and post to the members' resource library within a few days, so nothing here is truly a hard choice between the two, just a question of which one you want live.
Registration for both goes live through the events calendar; if you're not sure which session fits your schedule, the Events Committee can point you to whichever time slot runs closest to your time zone.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.