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Food Protection Trends COMMENTARY from the Executive Director “In January, we began
a new system of collecting
membership dues
” Membership dues. Just the mention of Membership dues brings a variety of thoughts to your mind. Some may think, I’ll just pass the invoice to my employer and they’ll pay the dues. Others may think, not again, I just paid my dues – especially when you pay from your own funds! This month, I want to bring you up-to-date on IAFP’s dues restructure project. Beginning in January, we began a new system of collecting membership dues. In past years, IAFP’s base Membership included a one-year subscription to Food Protection Trends . Then, if you were interested, you could pay an additional fee to add the print version of Journal of Food Protection plus a little extra for JFP Online. Many times over the years we heard from Members wanting to only receive the Journal of Food Protection. We also heard from some of our state Affiliate members who were not IAFP Members that felt the base dues for IAFP were too high to allow for their participation. With those two main challenges, the Board, the Membership Committee and IAFP’s staff began thinking about how to address the issues. After much discussion and surveying, the Board adopted a plan to restructure IAFP’s Membership dues. The new dues have now been in place for four months. Because an IAFP Membership can begin any month throughout the year, many Members have not been exposed to our new invoice and the selection you must make before renewing your Membership. When your invoice arrives, the base level Membership ($50 worldwide) is the only amount required to continue your Membership. This entitles you to the new IAFP Report , our electronic newsletter. The IAFP Report contains pertinent information including sections titled: IAFP Updates, Food Safety News, Regulatory Updates, Research & Reports, and Items of Interest. From these section titles, you can easily see that the IAFP Report will contain many items that will add to your knowledge-base of food safety information. The IAFP Report allows IAFP to put more current information in your hands faster than what is possible through our print publications. Then for a small additional fee, you can add Food Protection Trends to your Membership. Food Protection Trends will continue to contain science-based application articles, our President’s column, my column, new Member listings, news and updates along with industry product reviews. We will continue to print information about IAFP’s Annual Meetings, European Symposia and other International Symposia. It is appropriate to note that the IAFP Report is not designed in any way to replace Food Protection Trends . What I am trying to say by this is that Food Protection Trends will continue to be a source of pertinent information on protecting the food supply! Of course, with the Journal of Food Protection , you get the latest, peer-reviewed, scientific research articles. With the new dues structure, you may choose to receive the print version of JFP or JFP Online or both without having to first select Food Protection Trends . This appeals to some of our Members as I mentioned at the beginning of this column. The most important part of IAFP’s Membership dues restructure is that you now have a choice in what form of information you want to receive from your Association. Once the base-level dues are paid, you may select any one or all of the following: Food Protection Trends , Journal of Food Protection or JFP Online. The choice is yours! Watch your Membership renewal invoice closely and be sure to select the journals that are important to you. Remember, the content of the journals, both Food Protection Trends and the Journal of Food Protection will remain the same! As Frank Yiannas pointed out in his October 2006 President’s column, “We are interested in offering our Members more choice, meeting our Members’ needs, and making IAFP as inclusive as possible to food safety professionals all over the world.” If you have any questions about IAFP or the new dues structure, please call the IAFP office or contact us via E-mail. Our contact information is: phone 800.369.6337 or 515.276.3344; E-mail info@foodprotection.org.
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