Food Protection Trends - August 2010 - 468

from your president
reetings to all! It is the Fourth of July weekend as I write this, my last IAFP President’s column. By the time you read this, either in the IAFP Report or in Food Protection Trends, we will be in the midst of the 2010 IAFP Annual Meeting in Anaheim, CA (August 1–4). I look forward to the Annual Meeting for so many reasons, but the number one reason for me is the reunion of friends and colleagues in the food protection field. And I’ve been getting into reunion mode lately, too—big time. My immediate family held our “inaugural” Lewandowski reunion at the end of June. I have eight siblings (six brothers and two sisters), and it had been 10 years since we were all together. We are spread out almost coast to coast, from California to Ohio, Alabama to Minnesota. Two years ago, we picked a date for our nine families to get together in Foley, Minnesota at the dairy farm where we all grew up and where my mom and brother still live. Once everyone arrived, we totaled 59 family members (plus two babies on the way). We all have been very busy with our lives: careers, children, children’s lives, and even grandchildren for one of my sisters. We met for three days, spending the time getting caught up with each other, getting reacquainted with the nieces and nephews (some who aren’t that little anymore!), meeting the great-nieces and greatnephews, reliving happy childhood memories and making so many new ones. It was our chance to update our family picture and include all those who joined the Lewandowski tribe in the last 10 years (Facebook has been flooded with pictures from the Lewandowski reunion). To help with identifying who belonged to whom, each of the nine

“vickie's view”

By VICKIE LEWANDOWSKI
PRESIDENT

“Let’s continue to work together to meet our mission: ‘To provide food safety professionals worldwide with a forum to exchange information on protecting the food supply’

individual families wore t-shirts of the same color, while Mom wore a tie-dyed shirt with all of the colors, symbolic of the tie that binds. There were all types of games and entertainment; lasso golf, badminton, volleyball, horseshoes, baseball, bocce ball, rocket launching, and of course, karaoke! For three days our lives focused on talking, eating and

drinking. At one time or another during our gathering, each of us was part of a deep, intense or interesting discussion, whether about our families, our jobs, the economy and so on. On the last night of the reunion we had an informal closing ceremony, complete with glow sticks waving. Did I mention that for three days our lives centered on food? Lots of great food, which we consumed without a thought other than how delicious it was! As my family and I drove back to Illinois from Minnesota I reflected on the highlights of the reunion, and realized that there are many similarities between a family reunion and the IAFP Annual Meeting. We pick the date and the place for the IAFP meeting years in advance. Each time we meet, our attendance and membership has grown, with more people coming from all corners of the world. We meet for several days, getting a chance to catch up with those close to us and with whom we haven’t had the opportunity to spend time with in the past year. We spend time getting reacquainted with those we recognize from here or there. And I don’t think that I have ever attended a meeting at which I haven’t met at least one new person, so we spend time developing new relationships, too. As we come back together each year for the Annual Meeting, we relive happy memories and spend time making so many new ones. One of the most striking similarities of a family reunion and IAFP is the parts of the sum: the individual families that make up the one large clan are analogous to our 45 affiliates that help to make up IAFP as a whole, with the Association as “mother” organization, the tie that binds us all. Just as each individual

468 FOOD PROTECTION TRENDS | AUGUST 2010

Food Protection Trends - August 2010

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