Food Safety Magazine, June/July 2012

Bites
2012 Food Safety Summit Wrap-up

The 2012 Food Safety Summit kicked off in Washington, DC, in April with three certification programs on Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, Industry-Foodborne Illness Investigation Training and ServSafe, and moved into conference sessions on topics ranging from food defense to the Food Safety Modernization Act. Keynote speaker Oscar Garrison, division director, consumer protection, Georgia Department of Agriculture, and president of the Association of Food & Drug Officials, was introduced by Food Safety Magazine Editorial Director Barbara VanRenterghem, Ph.D., and spoke on how the food industry and public health officials must collaborate to succeed.

A highlight on the exhibition floor was the presence of First LEGO® League (FLL) teams, showcasing their solutions to this year’s assigned real-world challenge of food safety. FLL immerses children between ages 9 and 16 in current-day science and technology challenges, encouraging teams to design their own solutions to these challenges and build autonomous LEGO robots that perform a series of tasks. Learn more at www.usfirst.org.

The meeting ended with a Town Hall open forum discussion involving Michael Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Elizabeth Hagen, M.D., undersecretary for food safety, U.S. Department of Agriculture, which was moderated by Gary Ades, president of G&L Consulting and chairman of the Food Safety Summit Executive Educational Advisory Committee. The 2013 meeting is scheduled from April 30 through May 2 in Baltimore, MD.

IAFP Names The Kroger Co. as Recipient of the
Prestigious Black Pearl Award

The International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) selected The Kroger Co. as the 2012 recipient of the prestigious Black Pearl Award. Sponsored by Wilbur Feagan and F & H Food Equipment Company, the Black Pearl Award will be presented at IAFP’s annual meeting in Providence, RI, in July.

This honor is given annually to one company for its efforts
in advancing food safety and quality through consumer programs,
employee relations, educational activities and adherence to
standards, and support of the objectives of IAFP.
The IAFP Fellow Award will be awarded to Chris-
tine M. Bruhn, Ph.D., University of California–Davis,
and Ann Marie McNamara, Ph.D., Jack in the Box.
Robert L. Buchanan, University of Mary-
land, will be awarded the President’s Lifetime
Achievement Award. This award recognizes an
individual who has made a lasting impact on
advancing food safety worldwide through a
lifetime of professional achievements in food
protection.
Kansas State University and Daniel Y. C. Fung,
and the University of Wisconsin–River Falls and
Purnendu C. Vasavada will receive the Grocery
Manufacturers Association Food Safety Award in
recognition of a long history of outstanding contribu-
tions to food safety research and education.

New GHI
Newsletter
Available

The new edition of the Global Harmonization Initiative (GHI) newsletter, GHI Matters, issue 5, has much information of interest to the readers of Food Safety Magazine. Apart from short reports on recent meetings, there are details on GHI’s activities in forthcoming events, such as CEFood2012 in Serbia, the Institute of Food Technologists’ annual meeting in Las Vegas, the International Union of Food Science and Technology World Food Congress in Brazil, the European Hygienic Engineering & Design Group World Congress on Hygienic Engineering & Design in Spain and the European Federation of Food Science & Technology ( EFFoST) annual conference in France.

Of particular interest is the toxicity course that GHI is organizing in conjunction with the EFFoST conference. It is a unique opportunity to learn in a short time about reliable and rapid genotoxicity testing without using animals.

This issue has an abstract on “Food security, the moving borders of poverty, free markets and political interventions” with lead authors Atef Idriss (GHI ambassador in Lebanon) and John Lupien (Food and Agriculture Organization, Food and Nutrition Division).