President Message 2017

Dear CAFPNA members,

Greetings!

It was a great pleasure to meet many of you at the annual IAFP meeting in Tampa FL. As the new president of CAFPNA, I would like to thank you for your continuous support for this non-profit organization. In the year of 2017, with the help and significant effort dedicated by our board member Drs. Wen Zou and Scott Li, we were able to setup a bank account for accepting donations and membership fees. Currently, our student membership fee is $10/year, and our professional membership fee is $20/year. At this year’s IAFP meeting, we received a total of $250 in membership fees. We believe this will provide the organization a new start for the future. We now have a total of 317 members.

At this year’s annual meeting, we had two new board members elected. They are Dr. Guodong Zhang from the FDA and Dr. Xiaonan Lu from the University of British Columbia. With the addition of these two new board members, we hope that we will be able to offer more diverse activities in the coming years. With that being said, our new board members include: Dr. Luxin Wang (President, Auburn University), Dr. Zengxin Li (President-elect, Rich Products Corporation), Dr. Wen Zou (Treasurer, FDA), Dr. Xiaonan Lu (Program committee, University of British Columbia), Dr. Guodong Zhang (Program committee, FDA) and Dr. Xiuping Jiang (IAFP delegate, Clemson University). Ms. Hongye Wang will serve as our student representative, and she is currently organizing our annual mentor-mentee program.

A couple of activities the board is working on right now include (1) organizing webinars for Spring and Summer 2018; and (2) planning activities for 2018 IAFP annual meeting at Salt Lake City, Utah. The first webinar will be hold in January 2018 and Ms. Cindy Jiang (the senior director of the food and packaging safety program at McDonald’s Corporation) will give us a seminar on the food safety programs at McDonald’s (Title: Serve Safe and Quality Food Everywhere Every time).

As a young organization, although we do face challenges such as lack of funding support and limited hands, each of our board members strive to keep the organization going and provide the best to our members. Therefore, I encourage every member of this organization to get involved and provide us your comments and suggestions. Our ultimate goal is to better deliver the organization’s mission through networking, educational programs, career opportunities, and other activates.

The holiday season of 2017 is around the corner, we wish you and your family Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Warm regards,

Luxin Wang

President of CAFPNA

Auburn University