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Dairy, Food and Environmental Sanitation
My Perspective, June 2001
Affiliates help us fulfull our mission
By Jenny Scott, IAFP President
As we all know, the mission of the International Association for Food Protection is to provide food safety professionals worldwide with a forum to exchange information on protecting the food supply. In my April column I mentioned a number of ways IAFP fulfills its mission. In this column I would like to reflect on the importance of our Affiliate organizations in extending our efforts to a broader audience.
According to the IAFP Constitution and Bylaws, IAFP Members in a geographical area and organizations whose objectives are consistent with those of IAFP may apply for a charter as an Affiliate Association. IAFP now has 37 Affiliates: 31 in the United States, four in Canada, and one each in Korea and Mexico. The Affiliates and their officers are listed on page 498 in this journal. All the people listed have committed themselves to the same objective as IAFP — to promote a safe food supply. And they have volunteered their time to organize programs at the local level to help disseminate food safety and other information to help their members stay informed of current developments and better do their jobs. Thus, our Affiliates can be viewed as a grassroots food safety and environmental health effort, bringing education to the trenches where our first line of defense is.
I had the good fortune to visit nine of our Affiliates since I have been on the IAFP Board. I’ve have been able to see first hand the quality of the programs they provide. The topics have included HACCP, milk safety and quality, environmental regulations, bioterrorism, retail food safety, foodborne pathogens, irradiation, temporary food units, sanitation inspections, drug residues, microbiological testing, epidemiology of foodborne illness, and the National Food Safety System. If it sounds a bit like an IAFP Annual Meeting, it’s really not surprising. We share concerns for similar issues. In fact, some Affiliates hold meetings that resemble the IAFP Annual Meeting on a smaller scale — two or three days at a hotel or conference center, concurrent sessions, workshops, business meeting, exhibits, golf tournament, and an awards banquet. Others simply have one or two speakers address a topic of concern in an organization’s conference room. Meetings may have 30 or 300 attendees. Some Affiliates meet once a year, others two, three or even more times. Regardless of the format or the size of the meeting, they all serve a purpose: a forum to exchange information on protecting the food supply.
Who belongs to an Affiliate? Obviously some of the same people who belong to IAFP: regulatory personnel, academics interested in food safety and environmental health, students, food industry personnel, suppliers of products and services. In the Affiliates there are often more members from local health departments; state and local inspectors of retail establishments, dairy operations and farms; food safety managers from local retail operations, etc. Many Affiliate members rarely have the opportunity to attend national meetings because of budget restrictions of their organizations or time commitments of their jobs. Thus the Affiliate serves as a vital source of information and a means for discussion with other professionals on topics of mutual interest.
IAFP recognizes the value of having these groups associated with our organization, and we hope the Affiliates find value in being associated with IAFP. We ask (in fact, the IAFP Bylaws require) that all Affiliate Presidents and Delegates to the IAFP Affiliate Council be Members of IAFP. This insures that Affiliate officers are kept informed of IAFP activities and can keep their members apprised. Each Affiliate is allowed one representative (their Delegate) on the Affiliate Council. The Affiliate Council meets at the Annual Meeting and represents the interests of the Affiliates. IAFP has also implemented programs of benefit to the Affiliates. Each Affiliate Officer and Delegate receives a quarterly newsletter containing information about Affiliate activities, as well as other information of interest to Affiliate members. We announce Affiliate meetings in Dairy, Food and Environmental Sanitation, and we provide a listing of Affiliates and officers in the journal so that IAFP Members in your area know whom to contact. We send sample journals, audiovisual library listings and publications listings for distribution at Affiliate meetings. In addition, IAFP Board members are available to speak at Affiliate meetings. (IAFP pays for travel to the meeting; the Affiliate pays local expenses.) There’s only one small catch: because we would love to have more of the Affiliate members join IAFP, we ask that the Board member be given a few minutes to speak about the Association and the benefits of belonging to IAFP.
All our Board members who have had the opportunity to speak at Affiliate meetings
have been very positive about the experience. It has been great to meet IAFP
Members on their home turf, to meet potential new members, and to hear different
perspectives on protecting the food supply. After attending these Affiliate
meetings, I’m even more convinced: The Affiliates truly do help IAFP fulfill
its mission.