Food protection workshops

The International Association for Food Protection has announced two workshops to be held in conjunction with IAFP 2003, New Orleans, Louisiana, US, on 8-9 August.

The first workshop is entitled, Assuring Confidence in Laboratory Data and aims to present principals for understanding and implementing microbial control in a food production environment by providing skills to address limitations in current laboratory testing and documentation.

Participants will learn, in an interactive environment, how to effectively perform sound food and environmental sampling and microbial testing that can be implemented into their standard operating procedures and will conform to today's QA and ISO requirements. Participants will also review and discuss material from practical case studies and present their findings to the group in an informal presentation that is aimed at facilitating open discussion.

The second workshop is entitled, A Hands-on Course in Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment, and aims to cover fitting data to statistical distributions, creating and using predictive models in risk assessment, developing a process risk model, using sensitivity analysis, and testing proposed mitigations to reduce risk.

Over the course of the workshop, the participants will build an actual working quantitative microbial risk assessment in Excel using BestFit and Risk software. Participants will build, run, interpret, and determine the impact of various changes to the model. Two-way risk model will be run to show the value of separating variability and uncertainty in quantitative risk assessment. Participants will also learn to determine whether additional data, better process control or a redesigned process will produce the greatest reduction in risk.

Detailed descriptions and registration information regarding these workshops may be obtained by visiting the IAFP web site at www.foodprotection.org​.

The International Association for Food Protection is a non-profit educational association of food protection professionals. The Association is dedicated to the education and service of its Members, specifically, as well as industry personnel. It provides members with an information network and forum for professional improvement through its two scientific journals, Journal of Food Protection and Food Protection Trends, educational Annual Meeting, and interaction with other food safety professionals.