<FONT color=blue>[QA on the Road]:</FONT> 8 Industry Leaders Honored by NSF International

WASHINGTON, D.C. — NSF International last week awarded its Fifth Annual Food Safety Leadership Awards. NSF's Food Safety Leadership Awards Program recognizes key individuals and organizations who have demonstrated outstanding leadership in the foodservice industry.

William Fisher, vice president and chief marketing officer at NSF International, presented the awards to eight recipients, including two lifetime achievement awards to Paul Lachance, whom he called the “godfather of HACCP,” and Daniel Engeljohn.

“I owe a lot of thanks to a lot of people,” Lachance said. “I’m indebted to a lot of people.”

Lachance, who was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in Education & Technology, is the founding and emeritus director of the Nutraceuticals and Functional Foods Institute of the Center for Advanced Food Technology and professor emeritus of food science at Rutgers University.

He also played a pivotal role in the development of food and nutrition programs for the Manned Spacecraft Center of NASA. He was the first flight food and nutrition coordinator for NASA, where he established the Gemini/Apollo flight food systems and formulated the concept of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) with assistance from the U.S. Army NATICK Laboratories.

Daniel Engeljohn, who won the Lifetime Achievement Award for Public Service, serves in the Senior Executive Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in the policy office of the Department's public health regulatory agency.

In that role, he oversees the risk management activities associated with meat, poultry and processed egg products and leads the strategic planning efforts to develop food safety regulations. Engeljohn represents Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) on the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods and is the FSIS spokesperson on food irradiation issues. He also teaches human nutrition courses at Howard University.

“I’m very fortunate that I love what I do,” Englejohn said. “I know I make a difference.”

Each year NSF recognizes groundbreaking food safety achievements. Other award recipients were:

The National Environmental Health Association
Education and Training

The National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) “Epi-Ready Team Training” workshop is a face-to-face training opportunity offered to environmental and other health professionals. The goal of this training is to rapidly identify and investigate a foodborne disease outbreak and implement control measures to reduce the incidence of foodborne illness. The workshop includes lectures and interactive group exercises on passive surveillance, outbreak determination, environmental assessment, epidemilogic investigation, laboratory guidance, concluding actions and food defense. To date, workshops have been conducted in 46 states.

Elizabeth A. Bugden, MS
Education and Training

Elizabeth A. Bugden, MS, food scientist, managed Kids First, an initiative to prevent foodborne illness in school children funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The initiative was developed by the Rhode Island Departments of Education and Health's Food Safety Leadership Team, which included Ernie Julian, Tom Nerney, Lori Pivarnik, Martha Patnoad, Dorothy Brayley, Sandi Delack, Linda Nightingale Greenwood and Midge Sabatini. For the last seven years, Bugden led this group in developing and distributing 3,500 Food-Safe Schools Action Guides. The Action Guides are now used by school nurses, environmental health specialists, school administrators, foodservice directors and teachers in all 50 states. All components of the Food-Safe Schools Action Guide are available at www.foodsafeschools.org.

Jeanne Gleason, Ph.D.
Education and Training

As director of media productions at New Mexico State University, Dr. Jeanne Gleason has built a nationally-recognized production center. Dr. Gleason has focused on food safety media production for the last 25 years. Her mission has been to improve food safety practices within the foodservice industry through humor, innovative technology, animation and music. By focusing first and foremost on the audience, Dr. Gleason's team at NMSU's studio has successfully implemented change in behavior and core belief about food safety. Her studio's innovative and multi-lingual food safety education media have won numerous awards including the International Association for Communications Excellence, the USDA Diversity Award and the ACE Harmony Award.

Christine Moe, Ph.D.
Research Advancement

Christine Moe, Ph.D., is the Eugene J. Gangarosa professor of safe water and sanitation and director of the Center for Global Safe Water at Emory University. Dr. Moe's research has focused on foodborne and waterborne disease, primarily on noroviruses, the leading cause of foodborne disease outbreaks in the U.S. Dr. Moe's research team has found that noroviruses are the most infectious human pathogens ever described and can be excreted by infected people for up to a month — even after they no longer have symptoms. These findings provide vital information to the foodservice, hotel, cruise ship and health care industries in efforts to further control and prevent the transmission of noroviruses through food, food handlers, water and environmental surfaces.

Sterilox Food Safety Systems
Equipment Design

Sterilox Food Safety Systems has produced a natural, food-safe sanitizer using only water, salt and electricity. Sterilox Solution is used by leading supermarkets and foodservice properties to rinse fresh food products and sanitize food contact surfaces. Using the same natural antimicrobials produced by the human body, Sterilox Solution is highly effective at combating spoilage organisms and harmful pathogens such as E. coli, Salmonella, norovirus, H5N1 avian influenza and methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

Norm Faiola, Ph.D.
Product Development

Norm Faiola, Ph.D., is the associate dean of the College of Human Ecology at Syracuse University where he has been a faculty member since 1989. He is also a tenured associate professor in the Department of Nutrition and Hospitality Management where he teaches and conducts research related to food safety and hospitality management operations. Dr. Faiola holds patents for several food safety related devices including a rapid food chilling device (Rapi-Kool by SanJamar Inc), an automated stirring station and a wireless temperature monitoring system (Temp-Track by Cooper Atkins Inc). He works closely with several leading manufacturers of food safety and foodservice products to develop new and innovative solutions to address the ongoing challenges facing operators.