LONE STAR PERSPECTIVE
February 2008

“So how important is it to represent industry, education and government in IAFP?”

by Gary Acuff, IAFP President        

Every now and then I will notice something that piques my interest, but since I have to hurry off to other duties, it gets shoved into my mental “figure out later” stack of things to do. An item that has been on my stack for quite a while has been the IAFP logo. I have always thought it was an attractive, unique logo, but I was unable to remember if it had any specific significance. In case you need a reminder, our logo is made up of what appears to me to be three blue and green incomplete circles combined to make a single circle in what I would describe as an abstract design. Surely something that distinctive has some sort of special meaning for the Association, I thought. Turns out it does. When Jack Guzewich was president in 2000, he explained the new logo in the following quote from his January column.

A commercial artist developed our logo after discussions with our staff in Des Moines and with the Executive Board.
Several different concepts were discussed. The one chosen attempts to represent the blue of the sky and water, and the green of the plants on the earth. The colors wrap around each other to show the inter-relatedness and interdepend-ence of the natural environment and how our organization represents a global membership working together to assure protection of the food supply.

Before I went back and read Jack’s column, however, I had already begun to think about what the logo meant. For me, the three incomplete circles represent industry, education and government, but they combine to make one complete circle representing our combined efforts toward the single goal of advancing food safety worldwide. That’s a big job, and one that neither industry, education nor govern-ment can do alone. We work together in a near seamless fashion within IAFP to accomplish our goal, which I think is represented in the overall logo.

So how important is it to represent industry, education and government in IAFP? Our association constantly strives to equally represent each of these three sectors of membership. In fact, our Constitution requires that each segment of our membership is continually represented on the Board, so our election for the Executive Board Secretary annually rotates to each of the three membership sectors to assist in this plan for balanced representation.

The importance of this balance really came into focus recently for the Board. When my presidential term began in July 2007, Lee-Ann Jaykus and I represented education, Vickie Lewandowski and Frank Yiannas represented industry and Carl Custer and Stan Bailey represented government. Carl retired from USDA a few months ago and began to do some consult-ing, shifting him to the industry, but according to the Constitution, everything was fine because we still had Stan representing government. At the beginning of 2008, however, Stan also retired from USDA and began employment with bioMérieux, shifting his representation to industry as well. We found ourselves without official representative for our government members and began working on a solution to this situation.

Of course, the easiest thing to do would have been to leave everything alone, because we were scheduled to elect a government representative for Secretary this year and this problem would be self-correcting by the time the annual awards banquet concluded. However, the Constitution specifically states that there must be representation for all three sectors of the membership at all times. According to the Constitution, Stan was required to vacate the office of President-Elect, and the Board was to appoint someone from government to replace him. But the big problem for IAFP was that Stan had nearly three years of experience on the Board that would all be wasted if he did not move into the presidency. Besides, it would be very difficult for someone appointed to replace Stan to assume the presidency in just a few months. As you can see, we had a significant problem needing a simple solution. Unfortunately, simple solutions are often unavailable.

The Board sought advice from the Constitution and Bylaws Committee, and although there were some minor differences in opinion, most of the members interpreted the Constitution similarly and recommended the following measures to address this unique situation. Upon moving to industry employment, Stan should temporarily vacate his position of President-Elect. The Board could then appoint someone such as a recent Past President to fill that position until the end of the 2008 Annual Meeting. This appointment would allow the new appointee to sit as a voting member of the Board, and Stan could continue to attend Board meetings to stay informed on current issues. Once the Annual Meeting was concluded, our new Secretary representing government members would be in place, and Stan could assume the office of President without violating the Constitution.

Does that sound like a complicated solution? We thought it did as well, but the Board determined that it was more important to follow the direction of the membership, as defined by the Constitution, than to look for the easiest solution. However, during our attempt to follow the Constitution, Frank came up with a simple solution. He resigned from the Board. As one of our industry representatives, his resignation made it possible to replace him with an appointed member who would represent government until the end of his term. We selected Jeff Farber to fill Frank’s position as Past President. Jeff is a perfect choice for the position since he is employed by Health Canada and has previously served on the Executive Board. And, besides, Jeff is a trooper and we knew he would do anything necessary to assist the Association.

Now, Frank’s resignation was not my first choice for solving this situation, but it was certainly a more simple solution. He saw an Association need that he could address, and Frank proposed that solution for the good of IAFP. Frank will continue to serve on the Board in a non-voting ex officio capacity, so his invaluable experience and input is still available to the Board, but I feel the disruption in organization is troubling, just the same. Maybe this situation needs addressing through a change in the Constitution, but that is up to the Constitution and Bylaws Committee and the membership to decide, not the Board. We serve at the pleasure of the membership and strive to follow your direct-ion.

So after all this disruption in Board membership, I am reminded of our logo. Three incomplete circles combined to form one complete circle—representatives from industry, education and government providing incomplete expertise as individuals, but working in concert with colleagues to present a unified and complete effort toward advancing food safety worldwide.

How important is equal repres-entation? Well, as always, I am interested in hearing from you on any topic, but I would be especially interested in commentary from you on how you think our Const-itution handled this particular situation. You can E-mail me at gacuff@tamu.edu.