Work has begun on the new Fresh Milk Production Publication, and F2C expects the project to stay on track for a December publication date.
Subcommittee Members Tim Wightman, Rebecca Brown, Sharon Wilson and Ted and Peg Beals have recruited Lily Dougherty-Johnson as Project Manager for the Fresh Milk Production publication.
Ten individuals, including farmers, veterinarians, researchers, health professionals and a professor, have agreed to serve as members of an expert panel to draft a new publication about fresh milk production.
The five members of the subcommittee, along with Gerald Snyder, Arden Nelson, Marguerita Cattell, Tom Baars, and Joseph Heckman will be the contributing authors. The entire team met for an intensive and productive 3-day meeting in October in Colorado.
Using the Guide to Good Dairy Farming Practice, published by the United Nations and the International Dairy Federation, as a starting point, subcommittee members created an outline of twenty-two chapters to be included in the publication. Each chapter was discussed at length.
In January, the project manager assigned tasks of drafting and reviewing chapters to each member of the team. This first stage is near completion: 21 chapters are drafted, and 14 reviewed by a second member of the panel.
The next step is in review, as both the steering committee and later the whole team will edit the texts in preparation to have the manuscript assembled into its final draft. There will also be a review of the material with small changes to prepare a parallel publication specific to goat dairying. Finally, the draft will be turned over to a professional writer for revision, with an expected publication date in December 2014.