Food Protection Trends - December 2009 - 838

from the executive director ecember brings to the close another year; another year in which IAFP has been very active in achieving its mission around the world. In this column, I’ll review the various activities IAFP undertook this past year. Normally, this is the issue where we would report on the financial outcome, however, our financial audit is not completed in time to allow for this report. I can tell you that the preliminary results do not look promising for a good outcome. With losses from our investments and disproportionate expense incurred at IAFP 2009, we are sure to incur an overall loss for our fiscal year. More will be reported on this subject later upon completion of the audit. One thing we can do now is review the successes IAFP has achieved in 2009. We launched the newly designed IAFP Web site in April which allows more options in the “Members Only” section. In addition, the Membership renewal system was tied in with the new site and for a Member just joining; they can now have immediate access to the Members Only section. This was a vast improvement over our old, outdated system. There are a number of factors producing this result, but our Membership (total numbers of Members) steadily increased over the year. We can now boast that Membership increased by close to 100 Members in 2009. Just think of this, 100 increase in Membership for IAFP when many other organizations are decreasing in their number! This is surely rewarding to know. There are so many IAFP Members who help to spread the word about IAFP. I’m sure this is a big factor in our increase. Also, “COMMENTARY” By DAVID W. THARP, CAE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR “There are so many people that come together to help IAFP achieve our goals and our mission” it is wonderful to see the number of Sustaining Members increase as they have this past year. Our Gold and Silver Sustaining Members have also increased which is excellent news! D u r i n g t h e y e a r, I A F P directly provided five educational opportunities for Members to come together to discuss food safety issues. Plus, there were two conferences where IAFP supported conference organizers in their program development. Those two, of course, are the Dubai International Food Safety Conference (DIFSC) and the China International Food Safety and Quality Conference (CIFSQ). Both conferences were very successful this past year and we are happy to be involved with them. The IAFP conferences this year included: the Raw Milk Consumption Symposium, the Salmonella in Peanut Products Symposium, IAFP 2009, European Symposium (held in Berlin), and the International S ym posium (held in Seoul). Each of these conferences had excellent attendance and participation by IAFP Members. As stated earlier, organizing and holding conferences and symposia provides, as our mission statement says, “a forum to exchange information on protecting the food supply.” It is so very important that we are able to bring together food safety professionals from government, industry and academia; to gather all concerned parties when issues are discussed. Our Affiliate organizations continue to grow with three new groups chartered this year. New Affiliate organizations formed in Arkansas, Colombia and Hungary. This provides further opportunities for more people to learn about IAFP and to become actively involved in either their local Affiliate or within IAFP. There are now 47 Affiliate organizations with 13 from outside of the United States. One Affiliate, our newest, was organized to address food safety issues in China, but is organized and based in North America. Members are made up of 838 FOOD PROTECTION TRENDS | DECEMBER 2009

Food Protection Trends - December 2009

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