Food Protection Trends

COMMENTARY from the executive director
June 2005

“We are fortunate to have active Affiliate organizations like CAFPA who are ready to assist IAFP in conducting the Annual Meeting”
By David W. Tharp, IAFP Executive Director

Planning and coordinating the IAFP Annual Meeting is a year-round activity with the buildup of work taking place over the four to six months preceding the meeting itself. It takes coordination of so many people; volunteers to help at registration and with social events, students to help as session monitors, speakers and presenters, exhibitors, sponsors, award recipients, hotel staff, tour and social event guides, and the list goes on and on! One of the groups that I have the privilege of working closely with is the Local Arrangements Committee (LAC). This month, I want to expand on the work that the LAC volunteers perform.

Recently, I attended a meeting of the Capital Area Food Protection Association (CAFPA) at the FDA offices in College Park, Maryland. The meeting was their most successful to date with more than 80 attendees and the topic was outstanding! Four expert speakers gave presentations on “Defense of the US Food Supply” as the audience intently listened. CAFPA also incorporated a social time (break) to allow attendees to interact and ended the afternoon with a lively panel discussion where the speakers answered audience questions. Congratulations to CAFPA on this very successful meeting. We hope you will build on this success for future successes!

I mention the CAFPA meeting because it is this group who will serve as the LAC volunteers for IAFP 2005. Under the direction of Jill Snowdon, the Local Arrangements Chairperson, the LAC volunteers will help welcome attendees to our meeting in August. Following CAFPA’s meeting, the 20 or so volunteers who make up the “core” LAC met to keep projects on their planning timeline up to date. I was able to sit in on this meeting to answer questions for LAC members and to give suggest-ions on how tasks have been accomplished in years past.

This year’s LAC is an enthusiastic group who want to make your experience at IAFP 2005 the “best ever” and the most memorable for you! The group is working on preparing a fabulous “welcome pack” of items to present to you upon your arrival in Baltimore. Sometimes I think that attendees do not recognize the amount of work that LAC members put forth on their behalf. Much of the work is done prior to the meeting and behind the scenes, such as the welcome pack. The logistics of distributing a welcome pack become over whelming: receiving items for the welcome packs, storing the items until assembly, then assembling and packing for transport to the hotel, transporting, delivering to the hotel, storing at the hotel, and lastly, distributing to attendees!

A responsibility of LAC similar to the welcome pack is the distribution of dairy products in the exhibit hall. In this case, the LAC solicits local dairies for contributions of ice cream novelties and single-serving milk and juice. Then again, they must coordinate delivery to the hotel and transfer to coolers in the exhibit hall. This is a very big undertaking for most LACs and one that is appreciated by attendees.

Other more visible areas that attendees see the LAC in action are at the registration desk, on tours and at social events, assisting with the Foundation’s Silent Auction, and in the Audiovisual Library room. Coordination of the volunteer’s schedule becomes a large project in itself. Most volunteers will serve 2-hour or 4-hour “shifts” with many of them serving multiple shifts. Normally, one person serves as a staffing coordinator so as to keep all shift requests straight. Somewhere between 40 and 70 volunteers will be “put to work” as volunteers over the conference week.

We are fortunate to have active Affiliate organizations like CAFPA who are ready to assist IAFP in conducting the Annual Meeting. It is fun to work with the LAC group in preparing for each Annual Meeting and this year is no exception. We look forward to seeing you at IAFP 2005 and CAFPA looks forward to welcoming you in Baltimore!