IFT FOODSERVICE DIVISION

The Foodservice Division of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) consists of about 600 IFT members involved in the supply, preparation, and presentation of ingredients and foods for immediate consumption on premises or to take home. Examples of foodservice operations are quick service, family dining, institutional feeders, supermarkets, and hotel and central kitchens. They include multi-unit chains and independent operators.

The mission of the Foodservice Division is to disseminate and promote research and other information on food technology as it relates to foodservice with the objective that operating conditions in the industry are improved.

What Are Our Objectives?

The Division sponsors symposia at the IFT Annual Meeting. Subjects are geared to the special interests of the Foodservice industry and include new research findings related to retail processes, new foods, and food supply changes.

A business meeting is held during the Annual Meeting (usually in June). At this time, committee reports are presented. These committees include Awards, Education, and Student Affairs (we sponsor a student's attendance to the meeting each year), Membership, Budget, Long-Term Planning, and Government Affairs. Board member election results are announced at this meeting. The Division also publishes a newsletter twice a year to update members about Division activities.

A Foodservice Division reception is usually held during the Annual Meeting to provide a relaxed atmosphere in which to network with others interested in Foodservice. At this reception, it is customary for the Division to recognize a person for his/her significant contributions to the Foodservice industry.

Membership in the Division provides a means of maintaining contact with other professionals working in Foodservice. Through the newsletter and the annual meeting, a member is kept apprised of current information and provided an opportunity to discuss common problems and possible solutions.

How Can You Participate?

Membership in the Foodservice Division is open to members of the Institute of Food Technologists.
(To verify current membership and publication costs, please review the application form.)

Regular IFT membership, 1 year, $165, to include Food Technology publication
Add Journal of Food Science online version $90, printed version $100, both versions $130
Foodservice Division membership $10
Application: http://www.ift.org/pdfs/member-app.pdf

Student IFT membership, 1 year, $35, to include either Food Technology publication or Journal of Food Science online
Add the other publication for an additional $25
Foodservice Division membership $5
Application: http://www.ift.org/pdfs/student-app.pdf

If you are a member of IFT, you may join the Division by checking the appropriate box on the annual dues invoice and including the indicated amount of Division dues with your IFT membership dues.

If you are not a member of IFT, you can obtain a membership application by visiting IFT online or contacting IFT Member Services at the address below. The application includes a list of Divisions. Simply mark the Foodservice Division and include the Division dues with your application.

NATIONAL RESTAURANT ASSOCIATION. Through the diligence of members of the Foodservice Division, the IFT and the National Restaurant Assocation have declared an alliance for mutual benefit. This will give members of each organization a focused means to interact in common areas of interest, including food safety and quality in Foodservice worldwide. Special forums are organized to provide a formal platform for the interaction and dissemination of information, while informal contacts between members offer many opportunities for networking.
**link to NRA website: www.restaurant.org

RESEARCH CHEFS ASSOCIATION. The Foodservice Division and the Research Chefs Association have formed a fraternal / educational alliance. The benefits of such an alliance are numerous, as both groups are known to be the foremost professionals in food research and product development for the foodservice industry. The RCA has been recognized as having set the standard for Research Chefs, and has created a new food discipline, CulinologyTM, which represents the marriage of culinary arts and food technology. The alliance will provide a platform for exchange of ideas and ideals, thoughtful exploration of our similarities and differences, and respectful examination of all points of view.
**link to RCA website: www.researchchef.org.

Jennifer Diamond, RCA Member and former IFT Foodservice Division Liaison, and Jeffrey Cousminer, RCA President Emeritus and IFT Member, have written about this alliance on the RCA website, with a link to the Division site.

Chair – 2-year term Gideon Zeidler (exp. 8/31/09) University of California Cooperative Extension 138 Highlander Hall Riverside, CA 92521 (951) 827-5038; FAX (951) 827-5091 e-mail: Gideon.Zeidler@UCR.EDU	Chair-Elect – 2-year term Stephanie Struble (exp. 8/31/09) Director of Brand Development Zaxby's Franchising, Inc. 1040 Founders Boulevard Athens, GA 30606 (706) 433-2275; FAX (706) 433-2276 e-mail: SStruble@zaxbys.com	Secretary – 2-year term Gillian Folkes Dagan, Ph.D. (exp. 8/31/10) Director, Product Performance Services ABC Research Corporation 3437 SW 24th Avenue Gainesville, FL 32607 (352) 372-0436 x 324; FAX (352) 378-6483 gillian@abcr.com
	(There is no Past Chair at this time)
Members at Large—2-year term
Dr. Scott Brooks (exp. 8/31/09) Director, Global Quality Assurance Yum! Brands, Inc. 1900 Colonel Sanders Lane Louisville, KY 40213 (502) 874-2501 office; CELL (830) 214-3911 scott.brooks@yum.com	Kathleen Kostival, Ph.D. (exp. 8/31/09) Food Services Strategic Business Division Nestec Ltd. Ave Nestlé 55 CH-1800 Vevey Switzerland +41 021 924-4443; FAX+41 21 924 4546 e-mail: kathleen.kostival@nestle.com	Dr. Vala Stults (exp. 8/31/09) California State University-Long Beach Dept. of Family & Consumer Science 1250 Bellflower Boulevard Long Beach, CA 90840-0501 (562) 985-2274; FAX (562) 985-4414 e-mail: vala@csulb.edu
Linda K. Halik (exp. 8/31/10) Director of R&D/QA United Citrus Products Corp. 244 Vanderbilt Avenue Norwood, MA 02062 (781) 769-7300 x 314; CELL (508) 353-4531 FAX (781) 769-9492 e-mail: lhalik@aol.com	John R. Randall (liaison) (exp. 8/31/10) President and General Manager Penford Food Ingredients Co. 7094 South Revere Parkway Centennial, CO 80112-3932 (303) 643-1688; FAX (303) 649-1700 jrandall@penx.com	Anju Rao (exp. 8/31/10) Program Manager, NAFS-Premium R&D Campbell Soup Company 1200 Merrill Creek Parkway Everett, WA 98203 (425) 407-6526; FAX (425) 407-6585 anju_rao@stockpot.com
Newsletter Editor / Webpage Editor O. Peter Snyder, Jr., Ph.D. Hospitality Institute of Technology and Management 670 Transfer Road, Suite 21A St. Paul, MN 55114 (651) 646-7077; FAX (651) 646-5984 e-mail: osnyder@hi-tm.com web site: http://www.hi-tm.com	Section / Division Representative to SPS O. Peter Snyder, Jr., Ph.D. Hospitality Institute of Technology and Management 670 Transfer Road, Suite 21A St. Paul, MN 55114 (651) 646-7077; FAX (651) 646-5984 e-mail: osnyder@hi-tm.com web site: http://www.hi-tm.com	Student Representative Sonia D. Hudson University of Florida Food Science and Human Nutrition e-mail: sdhudson@ufl.edu

The following recent Minutes to the Foodservice Division's Executive Board meetings are now available.

Please click on the links below for a .pdf version of the following newsletters.

Foodservice Division Symposium, June 30, 2008: Ensuring Customer Food Safety in Daily Retail Food Operations

Description: Foodborne illness continues to be a serious threat to companies and their customers. It is the cook / chef who is still the critical control point in protecting customer health from contaminated food. At the same time, cooks / chefs must be knowledgeable of current trends, innovate new products and processes, and use new ingredients from around the world. This symposium will focus on the latest information on what managers and cooks / chefs in retail food establishments should do to protect their customers as well as their brand names, and be market leaders in retail.

SPEAKERS AND SESSION DESCRIPTIONS
Click on the links below (presenters' names) for the PowerPoint presentations(.pdf)

1. SHIRLEY BOHM
FDA CFSAN - Retail Food Protection
Title: Current FDA retail food safety activities and future trends
Description: The FDA is responsible for writing the FDA Food Code to provide guidance to local regulatory agencies and the retail food industry on the controls that operators need to follow to assure the safety of prepared food and to protect consumer health. An important change to the code has been the addition of the modification of the potentially hazardous food concept to one of Temperature Control for Safety. This presentation will discuss the implementation of this concept and incorporating it into local regulatory inspections.

2. JOHN FOLSE
Chef John Folse & Company
Title: What the chef does to ensure safe food
Description: The ultimate responsibility for preparing food to control the hazards and assure safety is that of the chef. In a small food establishment, this could mean training and managing 20 food preparation and service employees. However, in a large hotel / resort, this could be food for 2,000 guests and a banquet for perhaps 10,000 people prepared by a safety of perhaps 1,000 food employees. This presentation will discuss how the chef-manager of the kitchen plans and manages employees and food production to assure that customers are pleased with the food.

3. GIDEON ZEIDLER
University of California Cooperative Extension
Title: Effective food and food systems temperature monitoring to ensure food safety and high quality products
Description: Temperature measurement and monitoring in retail food operations as well as in food processing or in agriculture can be tricky, misleading and difficult to accomplish correctly. For instance, when air flow is involved in cooling or heating such as in cold storage, refrigerated delivery trucks, shipping refrigerated containers, green houses, or chicken house, there can be hot and cold spots where temperature monitoring problems are overlooked. This could result in food deterioration, food spoilage microbial growth and food safety hazards or biological stress in some segments of the designed area depending on the duration of the exposure. Human short sightedness is also a major factor. When numerous emerging pathogens started to emerge in the mid 1980s, and HACCP plans were implemented in different ways in the various food sectors, major attention was given to effective temperature monitoring. When a pallet of wrapped packaged eggs with an egg temperature of about 95°F is placed in the cold room to be reduced to 41°F, it could take the center of the pallet about two weeks to cool down, which could result in Salmonella growth and potential safety risk. Therefore, in order to overcome these problems and the many others that exist in the industry, a deep understanding of the system that produces the product and how it operates is needed. Fortunately, many new technologies were developed to assist in this problem; however, many more are still needed. Simple operation and sound economical solutions are also mandatory for the success of the project. For example: forced air cooling can reduce the temperature of the egg pallet at its center to 41°F in 3 hours at a cost of 0.02 cents per dozen. Refrigerated trucks with multiple stops in one trip can have multiple compartments to prevent escape of the cold air by opening each compartment only once at the delivery destination. Insulating loading compartments and computerized doors prevent escape of cold air in cold storage.
New wireless remote temperature monitoring systems, sometimes called RF Monitoring, have been developed to automatically and continuously monitor HACCP parameters and to solve or greatly improve temperature monitoring problems in retail food operations. This system is almost paperless and drastically reduces labor and human errors. The system is wireless, miniature in size, portable and hardly needs any installation.

4. JOHN SURAK
John Surak & Associates
Title: What is an effective Quality Assurance program for a retail food operation?
Description: Customers who dine out expect safe food, quality food, and service. These criteria must be met whether the restaurant is a quick service restaurant or a white cloth restaurant. To meet these requirements, the manager must use quality assurance principles to measure conformance to identified requirements. This seminar will describe how to develop a simple but effective food safety and quality assurance program. This program centers on using simple SPC tools such as Control Charts and Pareto diagrams that can be used by managers to interpret the HACCP and other QA data. The tools provide a means to rapidly interpret the data so that managers can take effective actions to prevent food safety incidents from happening in their restaurants.

5. O. PETER SNYDER, JR.
Title: Growth and death of Clostridium perfringens and death of Salmonella spp. during low-temperature cooking of boneless beef rib roast
Description: Very rare prime rib is a classic favorite food of retail customers worldwide. The FDA specifies that roast beef can be cooked to 130°F and held 112 minutes for a 6.5-log reduction of Salmonella spp. This research did not include Clostridium perfringens, because it has been assumed that C. perfringens spores in the meat would not be affected during cooking. This is not the case. This presentation will report on research showing that during the come-up cooking of roasts, C. perfringens germinates, can multiply, and then, dies to virtually undetectable levels when the roast gets to about 130°F. Also, oven humidity does not have to be at 90% for 1 hour, as required by the USDA FSIS and FDA model code, to get reduction of Salmonella spp. on the surface of the beef to undetectable levels.

Click here for the minutes of the open Executive Committee meeting held June 29th at the IFT Annual Meeting.

THANK YOU!
to Kraft, Penford Food Ingredients Co., TIC Gums, and United Citrus Products
for sponsoring the Division's cocktail reception

IFT link: click here. As more information becomes available, it will be posted on this website.

As research topics are chosen and studies to validate new, innovative processes and products are completed, they will be posted to the Foodservice Division website.

Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety (CRFSFS) and Journal of Food Science Education (JFSE) are part of Journal of Food Science (JFS) family of journals.

Offered as web-only journals, CRFSFS publishes comprehensive, critical reviews on topics of current issues in food science, technology and safety. Coverage includes physical, nutritional and genetic, as well as many other topics. Consider publishing your next comprehensive manuscript in CRFSFS. Visit www.ift.org.

JFSE is unique in its field and offered as a web-only journal. The target audience is food science educators at all levels. JFSE's primary goal is to educate and improve instructional practices and result in more competent food science personnel. Consider publishing your next educational article in JFSE. Visit www.ift.org.