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Perspectives from North of the 49th “ I hope that you all had
a great holiday season ” IAFP is in the action and news again! Hello everyone! I hope you are enjoying the early winter season! I just wanted to let you know that your President and Executive Board, as well as the IAFP staff have been busy as beavers (all American ones!) this past month. I told you last month about our co-sponsorship of the ICMSF meeting that was held in Washington at the beginning of November. The meeting was excellent and attract-ed a diverse audience of over 125 people. IAFP was mentioned numer-ous times and we had very good support from IAFP Members, including Past Presidents such as Bob Brackett, Anna Lammerding, Mike Doyle, Paul Hall, Jim Dickson and Jenny Scott. The subject matter in the field of public health goals can sometimes be complicated and dry, but ICMSF and other presenters really made an effort to make the material understandable and interesting. It will be more and more important as we move into the future to make the link between tools like performance and food safety objectives, and public health goals. Assessing the performance of what governments around the world do will be key. It is not enough now, and certainly will not be in the future, to just state you have put a public health policy into place without using indicators to observe how effective that policy really is. For example, has it led to a change in consumer behavior which has led to a decrease in foodborne illness, or has it led to changes in the way food is processed or handled at the foodservice or processing levels, so that consumer exposure to contaminated foods is decreased, thus again potentially leading to decreased illness. Extended abstracts of all the talks given in Washington will be published in one of our IAFP Journals. In addition, copies of the talks will be posted on both the IAFP and ICMSF Web sites. Another great “action” that we have taken is the writing of a document entitled, “Perspectives on Avian Influenza Risk Management for Food Safety Professionals”. For those of you who have not seen this as of yet, it is an excellent document which is available on our Web site and begins on page 32. With all the new developments in this area of late, we felt that it was very important to get something out to our members in a timely manner in this subject area that could supplement the material that has been developed by industry and government. We will be doing more of these types of things in the future, i.e., keeping our members abreast of the latest “hot topics”. We feel that this is “value-added” for our membership and, as well, positions IAFP as the true leader in food safety. We are also continuing the momentum we had with our successful one-day meeting in Prague and are planning another symposium next year, somewhere in Europe. I would love to hear from you in terms of what topics you may like to hear in a specific one or one-and-a- half day symposium and which venue in Europe you think may be a good one! Many of you know how import-ant our Affiliates are to IAFP. I had the great fortune of being able to visit and give two talks at the Wisconsin Association for Food Protection (WAFP), an association that has been around since 1943! I really enjoyed meeting with every-one and hearing some interesting talks. Special thanks to the whole WAFP executive board and especially Randy Daggs, who really took good care of me and had to pitch in to help with many miscellaneous issues, as some members had to miss the meeting for one reason or another. We are hoping to have a number of new international affiliates up and running in the next few years. Stay tuned for the exciting news! On the membership front, we also have good news as we are now consistently running above the 3,000 mark. We would like to bump this up even higher, and are looking for creative ways to grow our membership base. One idea that has been discussed is having every member who brings in a new member get a discount on his or her fees for the year. Again, we would love to hear from you on this and any other ideas you may have. I would like to take this opport-unity to wish IAFP Members and staff, as well as their families and friends, the very best for a happy and healthy New Year. The world today is so much more hectic and pressure-filled. We all need to take a break and spend quality time with families, friends, neighbors, etc.! I hope that you all had a great holi-day season and have come back refreshed and energized for the New Year. I know that it is going to be a great one for IAFP! 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 : For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. Have a great month!
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