Food Protection Trends

COMMENTARY from the Executive Director
August 2007

“As an IAFP Member, we ask that you help to publicize the new dues structure to your colleagues”
By David W. Tharp, IAFP Executive Director

When you read this column in August, IAFP 2007 will have been completed for just about one month. Since I am writing about one week prior to the start of our 94th Annual Meeting, we cannot report on final attendance or how successful the meeting actually was (I’m certain it will be a great success!). What I can tell you now is that we received more pre-registrations for IAFP 2007 than we had in total attendees ever before, so we will break previous attendance records for sure! We may even break 2,000 attendees this year; wouldn’t that be outstanding?

With the successful growth of IAFP’s Annual Meeting and the addition of a European Symposium scheduled each year, word is spreading about IAFP far and wide! Speaking of the European Symposium, it is now just more than two-months away! See the ad on the inside back cover and visit the IAFP Web site for program and sponsorship information.

Can you believe that just 10-years ago, we first broke the one-thousand threshold for attendees at an Annual Meeting? Now, we are knocking on the door for two-thousand attendees! I can tell you this growth has come with some pains, but they are good ones to have to endure.

First off, our staff size is the same number as we employed 10-years ago. There are many additional events that take place at our Annual Meeting when compared to 1997. We now work smarter, along with enduring more overtime than we experienced back then. In addition to stretching the staff, it is difficult to find facilities providing adequate space for our current meeting needs along with having space that allows us to grow our meeting should the need arise. When searching for a facility, we must plan for growth; all the time not knowing how much growth will occur or even if it will occur. There are risks taken but certainly we minimize such risks to every extent possible.

During the time we have seen steady increases in the Annual Meeting attendance, there has been some fluctuation in our Membership. IAFP’s actual Membership number is somewhat hard to track as our Memberships renew on an annual basis depending on what month you join. Many organizations run their Membership from January to December, building their number all year long. For IAFP’s Membership, it is easiest to compare a 12 month average which tracks our total Membership each month.

With our new Membership dues structure, we have already seen a large surge in Membership AND our renewal rate increased dramatically. There seems to be great interest in our new dues structure as we have received a number of new Members. Evidence of this growth is provided when you review the pages of new Members beginning on page 630.

As an IAFP Member, we ask that you help to publicize the new dues structure to your colleagues. Maybe there is someone in your office, lab or facility that can benefit from an IAFP Membership? Think about this for a minute…even if half of our Members encouraged one person to join, we could easily be more than 5,000 strong in our Membership!!!

Membership dues start at only $50 and that rate is good any place in the world! For only $50, your colleague can be a part of this international network of food safety professionals who work to “Advance Food Safety Worldwide.” Students receive an even better value and only need to pay one half the regular Member rates! Surely you know someone who can benefit
from an IAFP Membership. Take a minute right now to pick up the phone, walk across the hall or the facility, send an E-mail; do whatever it takes to give that little encouragement to someone who can join IAFP and receive a lifetime of benefits. Do it now, you will be glad you did!

I also want to share good news about the IAFP Sustaining Membership Program. You may have noticed the rapid growth in our Sustaining Members. Over the past four years, we have seen a 35% growth overall. We now boast 94 Sustaining Members and see that 100 are now within our sights! Each Sustaining Member helps to support the mission and goals of IAFP by providing that extra boost in revenue. A portion of all Sustaining Members’ dues goes directly to support the IAFP Foundation. In the case of our Gold and Silver Sustaining Members, substantial amounts of these dues support the Foundation and in addition, fund a separate pool of monies to support speaker travel for Annual Meetings.

We are fortunate to have 15 Sustaining Members now in the Gold level and eight Silver level Sustaining Members. We also have 79 regular Sustaining Members. Each of these companies sees the value of supporting IAFP in this way and we thank them for this kind support. If your company or organization is not a Sustaining Member, we invite you to find out more about the Sustaining Member Program either on our Web site or by calling to the IAFP office. I would be happy to talk with you to explain the program as would any of our staff!

So we have covered a few topics this month: growth in Annual Meeting, staff size, and growth in Mem-bership and Sustaining Membership. Next month, we will know the total number of attendees at IAFP 2007 and will be able to report that number. As for Membership, we hope you will do your part by encouraging someone you know to become an IAFP Member.