This survey is your opportunity to be heard and to help lead the direction of food fraud prevention. Our IAFP Food Fraud Professional Development Group has published an “interest survey” to be completed by IAFP and PDG members, plus the public at large. We are reviewing our direction for 2021 and beyond.
Link to the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FfPdg2021JulyIntroduction
QR code to the survey:
IAFP and the Food Fraud PDG
As of June 1, 2021, I’m honored to have been elected as the Chair of the Food Fraud Professional Development Group (FF-PDG) for the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) (https://www.foodprotection.org/). With Vice-Chair Steven Gendel from USP and outgoing Chair Karen Everstine of Decernis, we are currently reviewing our FF-PDG strategy.
- Survey Goal: Increase the protection of the food supply chain against food fraud threats through coordinated activities led by the IAFP FF-PDG.
- Survey Objective: Listen to the current FF-PDG members to identify needs and summarize in a position paper that will be shared for comment.
IAFP is one of the three largest food-related professional associations, with more than 4,500 individual food safety professionals focusing on “advancing food safety worldwide.” IAFP started in 1911 as the International Association of Dairy and Milk Inspectors. Their focus expanded to food sanitarians and the current, broader food protection focus. For those of you not familiar with the food industry, “The term public health sanitarian shall mean a person who applies the principles of the natural and social sciences for the detection, evaluation, control and management of those factors in the environment which influence the public’s health.” (reference)
IAFP also is the publisher of several scholarly journals, including the Journal of Food Protection and Food Protection Trends. “The Journal of Food Protection is the leading publication in the field of food microbiology and remains the premier journal dedicated to food safety.”
I have previously published my food fraud prevention research in the Journal of Food Protection with lead author Dr. Karen Everstine, “Economically motivated adulteration (EMA) of food: common characteristics of EMA incidents” (free access at: https://doi.org/10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-12-399). This article has been cited over 250 times in other scholarly publications, and it has continued to be very relevant, even eight years later. Compared to journal articles of the same age in JFP, the “Attention Score” is still in the 75th percentile (that is particularly good for a product fraud research article published in a food microbiology-focused journal).
Help Define and Emphasize the Focus on Food Fraud
Your involvement in this food fraud prevention survey is especially important and timely since these types of reviews are windows through which IAFP sees trends. The IAFP focus of “food protection” has been on food safety and the journal is “the leading publication in the field of food microbiology.” The FF-PDG is exploring the expansion of the field of food protection from microbiology and sanitation to the human adversary and the field of social science and criminology. Please share your insight by completing the survey link above.