IFT WORLD

The 2007 IFT Leadership Election will be conducted again this year electronically from March 5 to April 5, 2007. Members will select from a slate of candidates for President-Elect and Membership Representatives to the Executive Committee, and qualified Councilors will vote for Councilor Representatives to the Executive Committee.

Beginning March 5, members can access candidate biographical information for reference and vote online at a secured Web site from any Internet-connected computer anywhere in the world. Access to this Web site will be restricted by a required login, and usernames and passwords will be verified to ensure single, unique votes.

IFT will communicate important information about the Leadership Election to members via e-mail. If you have a new e-mail address, please visit www.ift.org, click on Membership and Member Center, and update your member profile.

Plan to attend IFT in Chicago
The 2007 IFT Annual Meeting & Food Expo^SM, July 28-August 1, in Chicago, Ill., provides you with the latest scientific developments and information about new products, technologies, applications, and services in the food industry.

Visit with suppliers at the IFT Food Expo® to learn more about new ingredients and products to help you meet your food processing challenges, participate in IFT’s Knowledge and Learning Center’s pre-meeting short courses, network with other food industry professionals, and receive up-to-date information about research conducted in many areas of the food industry.

Registration and housing opens March 1. Visit www.am-fe.ift.org for updates and comprehensive information.

JFS drops page charges for IFT members
IFT has discontinued assessing IFT members page charges for publishing their research papers in Journal of Food Science. The change applies to papers submitted after January 1, 2007. Nonmembers will continue to be charged $85 per printed page for the first four pages and $120 per page for each additional page.

Many journals assess page charges to help defray the cost of publishing original research, but a number of major competitors of JFS have discontinued their page charges. In addition to increasing JFS’s competitiveness for authors, the elimination of page charges for IFT members may also encourage nonmember authors to join IFT, since the cost would be less than the page charges for one paper.

IFT’s Web-based journals, Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety and Journal of Food Science Education, do not assess page charges for members or nonmembers.

For information on submitting papers to IFT’s journals, visit www.ift.org and click on "Publications."

Piližota elected to HAZU
Vlasta Piližota, Professor and former Dean at the Faculty of Food Technology, J.J. Strossmayer University, Osijek, Croatia, recently was elected a full member of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences (HAZU). She is the first food scientist or biotechnologist to receive this honor.

Piližota, a Professional Member of IFT, has worked as a visiting scientist with USDA’s Eastern Regional Research Center in Wyndmoor, Pa., since 1988.

Metzger, Anand appointed professors
South Dakota State University has appointed Lloyd Metzger Associate Professor and Alfred Chair in Dairy Education and hired Sanjeev K. Anand as Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Dairy Science.

Metzger was promoted to Associate Professor and received tenure at the university in 2006. Prior to joining the faculty, he was a research scientist at General Mills for two years.

He will continue to serve as Director of the Midwest Dairy Foods Research Center.

The Alfred Chair is sponsored by the S.A. Education Foundation of Milbank, S.D., in honor of Alfred Gonzenbach and Alfred Nef, the founders of the Valley Queen Cheese Factory in Milbank, S.D.

Anand conducts research in the microbiology of milk and meat products and has worked for more than 20 years with the Agricultural Research Services of the Government of India.

PMMI honors Harte
The Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute recently named Bruce Harte to the Packaging Hall of Fame.

During his tenure as the Director of the Michigan State University School of Packaging (1993–2004), Harte worked to enhance the reputation and capabilities of the department, including leading an initiative to develop the world’s first Ph.D. degree and online M.S. degree programs in packaging. He also encouraged fellow professors to conduct leading-edge packaging research and teaching, and as a result, Michigan State faculty published more books and scholarly research papers during this period than any other period in the university’s history.

Harte, a Professional Member of IFT, continues to serve as an advisor to the MSU Packaging Alumni Association.

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A 360-degree approach to product development
Successfully launching a new food product requires multiple activities and multiple disciplines. "All key components of food product development must be utilized—from concept generation and evaluation through culinary formulation, organization, sensory analyses, pilot plant development, packaging design, scale-up, HACCP, shelf life, marketing, pricing, public policy issues, and sell-in," explained Aaron Brody, President, Packaging/Brody, Inc.

He added that as a new food product developer, you must traverse the perpetually precarious routes from perceiving consumer need or desire through to a successful new food product launch. This means that you must manage the characteristics of your product, so you get customers and make money. Ultimately, you must identify good product ideas, create optimal products, and compose great marketing concepts.

On top of that, you must keep an eye out for where the next trend is coming from and how to create good concept blueprints for products to take advantage of that trend. From here, you must show your product in the proper package through the best functional structure and design.

Overwhelmed yet? IFT boasts membership of some of the industry’s best and brightest food product developers in the country. A regular contributor to Food Technology magazine and a Fellow of IFT, Aaron Brody has been paving the way for product developers for many years. He suggested that spherical 360-degree perspectives will empower developers to establish actionable platforms to optimize the development process.

Brody and his colleagues assert that professional development is a constant for all food product developers. As a course director for one of IFT’s Knowledge and Learning Center’s spring short courses, Brody and his faculty look to incorporate the critical elements of identifying and meeting consumer needs and desires into the strategies and technologies involved in food product development and enhancement during their Developing New Products for a Changing Marketplace course. The course will take place April 11-12, 2007, in Newark, N.J.

Co-faculty for this short course include John Lord, Professor and Chair of Dept. of Food Marketing at Saint Joseph’s University, and Howard Moskowitz, an IFT Fellow, who appears weekly as the "Food Doctor" on ABC News Now, where he anchors a 10-minute spot featuring young food and beverage entrepreneurs.

"The three of us represent over 100 years of experience and three different but complementary perspectives on creating and launching new food products. We look forward to a terrific program," said Lord.

Visit www.ift.org/knowledge for more information on this and other short courses.