Who We Are

The Master Food Preserver (MFP) program is a public service community outreach providing up-to-date information on food safety and preservation. A Master Food Preserver is a volunteer who is formally educated in food preservation/food safety and is certified by a university cooperative extension. Volunteers are qualified to teach food preservation/food safety in addition to disseminating that information via lectures, talks and other county events.

The University of California Cooperative Extension of San Joaquin County trained its first Master Food Preservers in 2013. Since then more MFPs have been trained and have begun reaching out to the community. It is anticipated that MFP training will be offered once a year in order to have the ability to increase the opportunities to interact with and provide valuable research based information to our county.

What are the Volunteer Activities?

Responding to questions about home food preservation and food safety that came into our help desk.
Staff information booths and present food preservation demonstrations at the San Joaquin County Fair, farmers markets and other local public events.
Develop and provide publications, educational materials, and web resources on all aspects of food preservation, including food safety, canning, freezing, drying, pickling, and preparing jams and jellies.
Provide public education activities sponsored by the MFP program, including Zoom lectures, in-person lectures, and demonstrations.