Food Protection Trends

COMMENTARY from the Executive Director
December 2005

““This Year has many Highlights””
By David W. Tharp, IAFP Executive Director

With December’s arrival, it is a good time to look back over the past year to see what we have accomplished. This year has many highlights; too many to cover in detail in this column, but allow me to mention a few. IAFP chartered an Affiliate organization in New Zealand; we began an effort to improve the visibility of the IAFP Foundation and conducted filming at IAFP 2005 to forward this effort; we held our first Symposium outside of North America; we have increased Membership over the year, we set attendance records at IAFP 2005 in Baltimore, and we had a record-breaking financial performance for the year ending August 31, 2005!

President Jeffrey Farber covered the IAFP Symposium and our co-sponsorship of the ILSI-Europe Workshop held in Prague, Czech Republic so I won’t go into detail about these events. What I do want to say is a hearty “thank you” to everyone who helped make these events possible. Specifically, thanks to ILSI-Europe for their help in organizing these events; thanks to our Symposium organizing committee and the speakers; and thanks to everyone who was able to attend. We had a great educational event in Prague and met many new food safety professionals to expand our worldwide network. The attendee surveys reported satisfaction, enthusiasm and support for future IAFP endeavors in Europe. We must start planning now for the future!

The topic I want to spend most of the time on this month is the financial condition of the Assoc-iation. It brings me great pleasure to report to you that for the third year straight, IAFP will have a positive fund balance in the General Fund! Above, I mentioned that we had a record-breaking financial year and that is indeed true. For the year ending August 31, 2005, IAFP posted net revenues in excess of net expense in the amount of $312,000 (see page 1036). This is the result of an exceptional year in which we were able to reduce operating expenses while finding additional sources of revenue. In addition, a 12% increase in Annual Meeting attendance improved our net results from IAFP 2005 in Baltimore.

We were fortunate to have a full exhibit hall, excellent participation from our sponsors
and keen interest in this year’s workshops. Each of these contributed in a positive way to our
banner year. Also during the year, we saw increased Membership including an increase in Sustaining Memberships, which really helps to provide support to IAFP. Our subscription revenue, mostly related to the Journal of Food Protection and JFP Online also increased significantly. Each of these factors helped to boost the net financial results for the Association.

As of the end of August, our General Fund balance was just more than $500,000. As I stated last year in my financial summary report, it is the financial goal of IAFP to reach at least a 50% level of our annual operating budget. We are about half way to our goal as our operating budget is now $2 million!

We have made great progress over the past three or four years in eliminating the negative fund balance that once hindered our Association’s flexibility. Operating the Association with a posit-
ive General Fund balance is much more comfortable. It is appropriate to thank our many Members, our Annual Meeting attendees, our exhibitors and especially our Annual Meeting sponsors who have given freely of their support for the betterment of the Association. This is what it takes to have a
truly successful organization — many individuals, corporate supporters and people who are willing to work together to help the Association progress! Thank you to everyone who provided this much needed support over the years.

Looking towards next year, I want to let you know that soon we will be working to establish a new, online submission program for Journal of Food Protection manuscripts where authors and reviewers will be able to access up-to-date information about their manuscripts via the IAFP Web site. This will allow for faster processing of manuscripts, which will allow quicker time to publication. In addition, the Exec-utive Board will review the results of our First European Symposium in Prague and make a decision on when our Second European Symposium will be held! Keep watching this column and Food Protection Trends for the announcement.

To wrap up for this year, we want to wish everyone a very happy holiday season and best wishes for a prosperous New Year from all of us at IAFP!