“Everyone deserves the opportunity to have access to healthy and affordable food. My international background allows me to help integrate modern approaches with traditional techniques to dairy food production to meet the needs of each community. Food production is the collection of processes and traditions, which transforms an ingredient into a complex and flavorful product and thus adds value and supplies healthy, safe nutrition.”
Elisa was born in Ragusa, Sicily and was educated as forage chemist and milk and cheese quality technician. In her region, she worked with dairy producers to improve milk and cheese quality and also spent several years studying the production, conservation and utilization of forages with particular focus on the quality of the native pasture and how to best integrate its nutritional value in the diets for lactating cattle.
In 2014, Elisa obtained a certification in “cheese making” and started a small cheese company focused on producing cheeses from Northern Italy. One of the cheeses won a Gold Award from the American Cheese Society in 2018 and another won a Gold Award at the NY State Fair in the open show. While doing this, she has developed a passion to train people in dairy product development, food production and food safety compliance as required by the U.S. government and E.U. regulations. “I feel it is my responsibility to empower individuals and communities to improve food production by providing training, tools and resources.”
In 1996, Elisa contributed to the development of the Protected Designation of Origin (DOP) trademark of the European regulatory Union for the “Ragusano” cheese. This was a six year project describing the effect of pastures, forages, breed, milk quality, and traditional cheese making approaches as well as the aging techniques which all contribute to the distinctive organoleptic characteristics of the “Ragusano” cheese.
She moved to the USA in 1996 for more laboratory training at Cornell University and still focused on feed chemistry and analysis. She married Mike Van Amburgh, in 2001, and because of his background in cattle nutrition, she updated her expertise and began to engage in food production techniques and U.S. regulations along with conducting market research for high quality cheese production in the U.S. market. In 2012, she completed her BS at Cornell University in Food Operations and Management.
Looking forward to assist with
- Milk and cheese quality
- Dairy product development
- Sanitation program
- Food Safety program
- Recall Plan program
- Personnel training in dairy production
- Labeling
- Marketing
- Customer education program