Food Protection Trends - March/April 2023 - 110

COMMENTARY
FROM YOUR PRESIDENT | Michelle D. Danyluk
As I write this article, a
number of exciting things are
happening at IAFP! After running
out of space in my last column,
I teased about some of the things
I still wanted to talk about, and
I'm delighted to share the latest
developments.
You may know that I have
a particular fondness for the
Program Committees and truly appreciate their efforts
toward ensuring the continued success of our meetings.
They had a gargantuan task before them last fall. There were
a record 250 symposia and roundtable submissions for the
2023 Annual Meeting - significantly more than we've seen in
any previous year. The Annual Meeting runs 11 concurrent
sessions, two of which are reserved at any time slot for
technical presentations, which only leaves room to accept
97 symposia and roundtable proposals. If you do the math,
that means fewer than 40% of the sessions you worked so
hard on were included. It's an incredibly difficult task for the
Program Committee to achieve a balanced program covering
all topic areas and PDGs, without overlap; please don't
take it personally if one of your proposals was not included
this year. Consider resubmitting your session next year or
turning it into an IAFP webinar.
Currently, the Program Committees for the Annual
Meeting and European Symposium are actively reviewing
abstracts and that task will be completed by the time this
gets published! This was also another record year for abstract
submissions to both the Annual Meeting and European
Symposium - increasing from our previous high numbers in
2019 (up 6.6% for the Annual Meeting and up 22% for the
European Meeting). Compared to 2022 abstract numbers,
it's up 37% for the Annual Meeting and an astonishing 94%
for the European Symposium. Please do not be disappointed
if you submitted for a technical talk and are accepted for a
poster; there is simply much more space for posters than
there is in the two concurrent technical sessions. Thanks
to you all for your individual dedication to promoting food
safety around the world and for your engagement in the
IAFP community.
The Journal of Food Protection's transition to Open
Access is well under way. There have been a number of
questions about this transition, and I wanted to provide
some clarity on the process. When we looked back at the
last 5-10 years, a number of trends were apparent: the
institutional subscriptions to the Journal were declining; the
number of manuscripts being submitted and accepted were
declining; citations of older articles that were free to read
was growing, while citations of recent articles with limited
(Continued on page 192)
FROM YOUR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR | David W. Tharp
After writing columns since
1997, this one looks to be the
finale! I became Executive Director
in January of 1997 after serving as
Director of Finance for 3 years...
and serving as interim Executive
Director for 5 months in 1995.
I didn't realize it when I started
at IAMFES that this would be
my dream job. One where what we do each day affects the
health and well-being of so many individuals around the
world. For our newer IAFP Members, I should explain
" IAMFES. " From 1966 until the end of 1999, IAFP was
known as IAMFES or the International Association of Milk,
Food and Environmental Sanitarians! That name always
took a little bit of describing as to what our Members and
Association actually did. Luckily, the Board undertook an
effort to change the name to International Association for
Food Protection and the Members voted overwhelmingly to
accept the new name for the new millennium, beginning in
the year 2000.
Now, back to my dream job. Last column, I covered
how we truly became " international " by participating and
organizing international, food safety meetings. That effort
led to an increasing amount of international travel to many
far away places. There were so many meetings over the years.
Of course, it began slowly and steadily increased to where
there were four to six international trips each year. Some
were to locations where we had been year-after-year. But
others were to new destinations offering the opportunity
to search out new experiences. I also mentioned in my last
column that my wife Connie was able to travel with me on
most of the international trips. Since I was either in meetings
or managing meetings, she was able to tour the cities we
visited. We normally planned " something extra " on our trips.
At a minimum, Connie would take me to places she enjoyed
while I was working!
I'll just name a few places we enjoyed visiting after
the work was completed. After our first Latin America
Symposium in Brazil (2008), Connie and I were able to visit
Manaus on the Amazon River and enjoy a few days at an
eco-lodge in the Amazon jungle. While in Dubai, we spent
(Continued on page 192)
110 Food Protection Trends March/April
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