Food Protection Trends - December 2008 - 910

“COMMENTARY” from the executive director t is hard to believe, but here we are at December and the end of another year! The conclusion of a year provides a good opportunity to look back and to look ahead, so we will do both in this month’s column. To look back, we will review IAFP’s accomplishments and our financial outcome. Then to look forward, we’ll report on plans for 2009. Let’s begin with the look back. During 2008, IAFP organized and held four conferences (or symposia) around the world. They ranged between the much focused, “Prepared, but Not Ready-to-Eat Foods” symposium in January (held in the Washington, D.C. area) to the Latin America Symposium on Food Safety covering a broad section of subject matter (held in Campinas, SP, Brazil). In November this year, we held our Fourth European Symposium on Food Safety in Lisbon, Portugal looking into the issues of “Advancements in Food Safety.” Since I am writing prior to the start of this Symposium, we cannot report details, but all indications point to a record attendance and standing room only for the facility we will use. The fourth conference, of course, was our Annual Meeting! We had a very successful meeting this year in Columbus, Ohio with more than 1,840 attendees. The conference was our second best in terms of adding net revenue to the General Fund. Other accomplishments include working with organizers in Beijing, China and Dubai, United Arab Emirates on conferences held in those locations. Although these were not technically “IAFP” conferences, they both provided an excellent I By DAVID W.THARP, CAE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR “A new service provided to members is that Food Protection Trends is available for online access” opportunity for IAFP to become more recognized in those regions. In addition to our conference activities, we also expanded our Membership by 11% over the last two years. We have seen a 50% increase in international Membership while Canada and Mexico (combined) and the US have increased by 18% and 4% respectively. This is surely an indication that IAFP is providing the information needed by food safety professionals worldwide! Members can now access the Journal of Food Protection Online, 24 hours a day, anyplace in the world. A new service provided to Members is that Food Protection Trends is available for online access. As with JFP Online, this journal is now available online to Members around the globe for instant access any time of the day! There is no need to wait for the postal service to deliver IAFP journals when you purchase online access! As for our financial report, let’s just say it could have been better. IAFP’s year ends on August 31, so the financial activity report is shown on page 956 of this issue. You will see that the change in our General Fund balance declined by almost $92,000. This loss for fiscal year end (FYE) August 31, 2008 can be directly linked to the loss we incurred on our investment a c c o u n t s . We b u d g e t e d fo r $40,000 to come from investments when in reality; we lost $73,000 for a difference of $113,000 in net results. There were a number of other factors, both positive and negative, that influenced the final results; but the end result is still the same – a loss of $92,000. As disturbing as this is, it is a not catastrophic for IAFP. If you have followed my reports over the past years, you will notice that as an organization, we have focused on building the General Fund balance so that we can sustain losses such as the one incurred this year. We still have a substantial dollar amount in the General Fund ($668,000) and that allows us to be very strong financially. 910 FOOD PROTECTION TRENDS | DECEMBER 2008

Food Protection Trends - December 2008

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