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Perspectives from North of the 49th “ I think you will all be pleased with the wide
selection of symposia from which one can
choose to attend this year” I have just come back from Calgary where we held our Program Committee meeting, followed by our Executive Board meetings. First, let me tell you that Calgary is a beautiful city and I think you will be very impressed. The three hotels that we have picked for this meeting are all very close to the convention center where our scientific sessions will be held. The convention center itself has very nice décor and we have plenty of room this year for posters and all our exhibitors. I want to tell you a little bit about the Program Committee meeting. This year’s committee had a really daunting task as 557 abstracts were submitted, around 115 more than last year! Just to give you a rough idea, 5 years ago, in 2001, only 230 abstracts were submitted! Our committee this year was very ably led by Chairperson Vickie Lewandowski and Vice-chairperson Lee-Ann Jaykus. This year we had 4 new members join the committee, Linda Harris, Susan McKnight, Gloria Swick-Brown and Pascal Delaquis. It was also the first Program Committee meeting for Tamara Ford who took over as our Communications Coordinator. Tamara did an excellent job in her first meeting. The way in which the abstracts were reviewed this year was a little different from previous years. For example, this year all authors’ names were taken off the abstracts so as not to bias or influence the review of the abstracts. In addition, reviewers were arranged into four teams of three people, consisting of one industry, one government and one university representative. The abstracts that the teams had difficulty with or had rejected, were then re-reviewed by a team of 7 people. Thus, each abstract rejected was reviewed by a total of 10 people. Everyone on the committee felt that the process worked really well and that a fair and objective system of evaluation had been used to assess the submitted abstracts. That being said, there are still a number of areas, which the Board and the Program Committee will be looking to improve for next year. As one example, in a number of cases, abstract submitters did not follow the abstract guidelines. One possible way around this is to make the abstract guidelines more prescriptive in the sense that we could give headings such as title, methodology, results, main conclusions and significance of the work, then individuals would only need to populate those fields. There are other scientific societies who are prescriptive in this manner. What are your thoughts on this possible change for next year? Another very exciting change is that two of the symposia this year will be very applied and presented in a roundtable format. A total of 90 minutes will be allocated to each roundtable. A moderator will speak for 10–15 minutes to set the stage and ground rules. Each speaker will give a brief presentation of no more than 7–8 minutes, with each ideally providing a different viewpoint. Then there will be 2 or 3 questioners who will have prepared questions to ask the speakers. The remaining time will be used for the audience to ask questions of the speakers and questioners. We hope you like this format and are looking forward to your feedback. One of the roundtables will be on issues surrounding raw milk, a very hot topic of late that we all should keep abreast of! I think you will all be pleased with the wide selection of symposia from which one can choose to
attend this year. Examples of the subject areas which we have not discussed before in symposia at the Annual Meeting are; “Spores, Spores and More Spores– What is Spoiling My RTD Beverage?” and another on “International Food Law.” In addition, we will have two symposia dealing with disasters; one on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and its effects on seafood safety and another on post-disaster cleaning and sanitation. We will also conduct three excellent workshops this year, the titles discussed in future columns, so keep a watch in this space! As always, I can be reached by E-mail at: jeff_farber@hc-sc.gc.ca and would love to hear from you! Quote of the month : “ Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.” Louis Pasteur Have a great month!
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