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Point of View “Please join us at IAFP as we
and our members work to share new food safety
ideas, practices, and products" As I write this month’s column, I’m en route back to the US after attending IAFP’s Second European Symposium, titled “Innovations in Food Safety Management . ” I’m pleased to report that by all accounts the meeting, which was held in Barcelona, Spain on November 30 and December 1, was a great success. In attendance were 140 professionals representing academia, industry, and regulatory. This represents a 100% increase in attendance when compared to our First European Symposium held in Prague, Czech Republic a little over a year ago. While most of the attendees came from various countries within the European Union, some came from as far away as New Zealand and Brazil. Now, you might be asking yourself, why is it important for IAFP to maintain and develop stronger ties with Europe and our European members? Although there are several good reasons, let me briefly mention two. First, our ties with Europe are part of our heritage. It is hard to believe, but IAFP was originally founded in 1911, almost a century ago. Of interest, our records indicate that we have had European members as part of our association dating back as early as 1918, so our ties with Europe have quite a long history. It’s important that we maintain our long-standing relationship with our European members, build upon it, and hopefully, attract new ones too. Second, a strong presence in Europe helps us to advance our purpose to a broader audience. Our mission is simple. It is to provide food safety professionals w orldwide with a forum to exchange information on protecting the food supply. We do this, among other ways, through the publication of our two technical journals, Food Protection Trends and the Journal of Food Protection, also known as JFP. As a special note, Spain (our host country for the meeting) was the country with the second highest number of articles published in JFP. In 2005, 38 or 10% of the research articles published in JFP were from Spain. IAFP also accomplishes our mission through our Annual Meeting, held in North America, which attracts food safety professionals from all over the world. But we at IAFP know that to fulfill our mission of Advancing Food Safety Worldwide, holding an Annual Meeting in North America is not good enough. So that’s why we were in Europe for a second time and that leads me to the topic of the meeting – “Innovations in Food Safety Management.” I don’t think that there is any question that in many regions of the world, we have made pro-gress in the battle against foodborne disease. Some might say that it has been incremental progress, but nevertheless, it is progress. For those of us with a passion for advancing food safety and protecting public health world-wide, we would like to see even more progress made and at a more rapid pace. In order to do this, I am persuaded that we need innovation. We need innovations in food safety. I came across a quote by Bill Gates that I think summarizes this point quite well. He said, “Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time.” I think this point is certainly true in the field of food safety too. A simple definition of an innovation is the act of intro-ducing something new. From a food safety perspective, an innovation can be a new or enhanced risk-reduction strategy or risk- reduction model. An innovation can be a new food safety practice or a new food-safety product. An innovation can be a new food- production process. The bottom line is that an innovation leads to a proactive change and a proactive change can lead to even greater reductions in the global burden As you can imagine, putting together the European meeting required the hard work and contributions of many dedicated members and staff. Special thanks to all of the speakers who shared their expertise and the program committee members for their guidance in both selecting the topic and meeting location. I also would like to thank the Inter-national Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) European Branch and the World Health Organization for their collaboration and Leon Gorris, Jeff Farber, David Tharp for their extra efforts in putting together the program. A very special thanks to our sponsors (listed in alphabetical order) – AES Chemunex, AOAC Research Ins titute, BD Diagnostics, bioMérieux, DuPont Qualicon, Food Diagnostics, FOSS, IAFP Foundation, ILSI Europe, Invitrogen Life Technologies, MATRIX MicroScience, and the Society for Applied Microbiology – for their contributions. Several of the presentations given at the Innovations in Food Safety Management meeting are posted on our Web site. Please take a moment to review and share them with others. Also, highlights of the meeting appear on page 30 of this edition of Food Protection Trends. In closing, remember that without innovation and change, there can be no progress. Please join us at IAFP as we and our members work to share new food safety ideas, practices, and products. Working together, we can learn from each other and Advance Food Safety Worldwide. As usual, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please let me know. You can e-mail me at frank.yiannas@disney.com. Until next month, thanks for reading.
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