Jacqueline Mitchell
Editor's Note: QA staff are on the ground in Pittsburgh for this year's IAFP 2022. Follow us on Twitter for live updates.
PITTSBURGH — The International Association for Food Protection's IAFP 2022 kicked off last night in Pittsburgh, Pa. The association's annual meeting, its second in-person event since 2020, started with welcome comments from IAFP President Ruth Petran, an update from IAFP Foundation Chairperson Gary Acuff and an awards presentation.
“It has certainly been my great honor to serve as your president this past year, which brought lot of uncertainties, and frankly, some sadness at times with the reality of the pandemic looming over everything that we tried to do,” Petran said. “But I also evidenced the wonderful resilience and dedication of our food protection community to advancing sound science, exchanging information and creatively networking. And now, we’re all here, and it’s a time to celebrate.”
She recognized long-time members and exhibitors at the show, including one 50-year member, 56 10-year exhibitors, 29 20-year exhibitors, 10 30-year exhibitors and three 35-year exhibitors.
Gary Acuff, IAFP Foundation Chairperson, announced a new campaign, $4 Million for 40 Years, which aims to raise the foundation’s general fund from $3 million to $4 million by 2024, the foundation’s 40th anniversary. Acuff said that with the additional funds, the foundation would like to invest more in the membership through initiatives such as professional development grants and an international student research exchange program.
The evening included awards presentations.
Kiley Doherty was awarded the Dave Theno Safety Fellowship Award at #iafp2022. Kiley was inspired to get into food safety after experiencing foodborne illness herself in 2013. Arpita Aditya received the Peanut Proud Student Scholarship Award.
Fellow Awards went to to David Blomquist, James Dickson, Lynn McMullen, George-John Nychas and Mandan Sharma, and 29 travel award recipients were honored.
Dr. Lucia Anelich of Anelich Consulting, Pretoria, South Africa, presented the Ivan Parkin Lecture, “Out of Africa,” which covered challenges the continent is facing, from poor, unsanitary conditions of street food to record numbers of hunger that only continue to rise. Anelich has traveled to about 18 African countries and proposed formulated food safety strategies to address these challenges, including developing risk-based food safety standards and harmonizing these standards.
“I’d like to thank this organization for giving Africa a voice,” she said.
What we saw on the IAFP 2022 exhibit floor.
The first evening at IAFP 2022 concluded with a wine and cheese reception on the exhibit hall where more than 150 exhibitors were ready to great attendees.
Remco, a Vikan company, is providing tutorials of the Microsoft HoloLens, an augmented reality headset that the company sends to clients as an alternative to physically auditing a facility. The headset operates through Microsoft Teams and allows the client to be Remco’s eyes — everything the client sees while wearing the headset is video streamed to a Remco representative, allowing for visual inspection from any location. Audio speakers in the headset allow Remco and the client to communicate, with options for Remco to augment the user’s view with graphics and web pages.
Elsewhere, Eagle Protect, which manufactures gloves for the food industry, is providing some details on recent research looking at what kind of pathogens can end up on gloves, a reminder of why glove cleanliness and condition is just is as important wearing the gloves.
We also took a quick timelapse spin around the show floor. Check it out here.
Stay tuned for more updates from this year's conference.
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