President Message - 2014

Dear CAFPNA Members:

I was so glad to see many of you during our annual meeting this year at Indy, Indiana! I want to take this opportunity to welcome our new members to the Chinese Association for Food Protection in North America!

Nothing against fall, but summer is ending too soon. I feel like September could the busiest time of the year – the kids go back to school, work piles up after summer dog days, and Thanksgiving is suddenly upon us. I looked at my calendar during the Labor Day weekend, everything piled up to December.  No matter how busy I will be, I still want to let you know - I am so proud to serve you as your president this year and I will do my best to work together with you all to move our affiliate forward.

As you know, the new board members are elected during our annual meeting and they are:

President: Ruiqing Pamboukian, Ph.D., U.S. Food and Drug Administration

President Elect: Zuoxing Zheng, Ph.D., Kraft Foods

Secretary: Xiuping Jiang, Ph.D., Clemson University

Treasurer: Zhinong Yan, Ph.D., Commercial Food Sanitation, an Intralox Company

Past President: Li Maria Ma, Ph.D., Oklahoma State University

IAFP Delegate: Li Maria Ma, Ph.D., Oklahoma State University

We also elected our Student Committee leaderships:

Yeu Cui and Yen Yang will serve the co-chairs for this committee. Welcome and thank you for your service Yeu and Ren!  The student committee and the Mentor-Mentee committee will work closely together to establish a program to help our student members and members need career advice.

Following the annual meeting, the board members gathered together and discussed the plan for this coming year.  I would like to share the highlights with you for your comments and inputs:

  1. We will maintain the current committees:
    1. Student committee: co-chairs – Yeu Cui and Ren Yang
    2. Career Development committee: Chair - Zengxin (Scott) Li
    3. Education and Training committee: Chair and co-chair - vacant
    4. Communication/Website: Chair - Chen Wang, co-chair - vacant
      If you are interested in the above vacant leadership positions, please email to Xiuping and myself at xiuping@clemson.edu and Ruiqing.pamboukian@fda.hhs.gov
  2. We are currently helping IAFP to organize and host a symposium in the upcoming “China International Food Safety & Quality Conference & Expo” that will be held in Shanghai, China from November 5 to 6, 2014.  The symposium title is:Establishing a Successful Foreign Suppliers Verification Program.  Please see their website for more information: http://www.chinaexhibition.com/Official_Site/11-5208-CIFSQ_2014_-_The_8th_China_International_Food_Safety_and_Quality_Conference_+_Expo_2014.html
  3. While we celebrated the newly established Chinese Association of Food Protection (CAFP), we are planning to work with them closely to bridge communications between China and US.
  4. As we have done in the past, this year we will again propose a symposium related to China food safety at IAFP 2015 annual meeting.  The deadline for proposal submission is October 14, 2014.  If you have any ideas on proposed topics and potential speakers’ information, please let us know.  We are in the process of collecting topics and seeking the potential speakers.
  5. Unlike other affiliates, our members are not localized geographically together. This made it impossible to have member meeting beyond the IAFP meeting. This year we will try to use the webinar as a tool to host some additional meetings and keep communication open to all members. Webinars will also be used to education purpose.  We need your suggestions on topics and speakers.
  6. Maintain and update website – in order to maintain a live website, we will need contents related to food safety including articles, news, job posting, announcements, award, pictures, etc.  If anything crossed your desk you think that will be beneficial to our members, please send them over to Chen Wang Chen.Wang@lifetech.com and Zuoxing (zuoxing.zheng@kraftfoods.com).
  7. Organize our affiliate annual meeting during the IAFP 2015- the IAFP meeting will be held in July 25-28, 2015 in Portland, Oregon.
  8. We will continue to explore the following items carried over from last year:
    1. Establish an advisory board - We are looking for individuals among our members to help us in fundraising and providing guidance for future CAFPNA directions and activities.  Please contact Xiuping and myself (xiuping@clemson.edu and Ruiqing.pamboukian@fda.hhs.gov) if you are interested in joining the advisory board
    2. Establish scholarships for student travel to scientific meetings (Need your suggestions)

I am look forward to carrying on the great example shown to me by former Presidents and all the professionals I have had the pleasure of working with on the Board.  This year I will challenge every member to give just a little more involvement to make our association grow stronger. 

I am looking forward to another outstanding yearSmile

P.S. I hope you all like the new logoJ

Sincerely,

Ruiqing Pamboukian (Yang) 杨蕊清
President CAFPNA, 2014-2015