Our First Official Event: Summary

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The Colorado Association for Food Protection (CAFP) held its first official event on April 18, 2018 at the Blue Moon Brewing Company in Denver’s RiNo District.  Thirty-seven people were in attendance.  The event began with a networking reception followed by opening remarks from President Juliany Rivera Calo.  She welcomed attendees, discussed upcoming plans for the affiliate, and introduced the host for the evening.  All sponsors were thanked for their support.

The second part of the meeting was a panel titled: “Food Trends and Food Safety Challenges – What They Mean and How to Get Ahead.”  Ron Burke, Sr Director of Food Safety Quality & Regulatory for Ardent Mills served as the host for the panel.  A significant part of the CAFP’s mission is to share insights from diverse stakeholders across of the food industry.  These stakeholders include industry leaders, public health, regulatory, and academia.  To fulfill this mission, the food safety panel included Dr. Elaine Scallan, Co-Director of the Colorado Integrated Food Safety Center of Excellence, and professor at Colorado School of Public Health; Dr. Lee Johnson, VP of Technical Services for West Liberty Foods; and Jeremy Schneider, Quality Assurance Manager for Chipotle Mexican Grill.

The following topics were part of the panel discussion:

  • Current food safety challenges facing the industry.
  • Foodborne diseases in Colorado and/or other regions.
  • Emerging trends and cutting-edge technologies being implemented within the industry.
  • Whole Genome Sequencing in relation to outbreak investigations.
  • Meat alternative trends: The Impossible Burger, insect protein, laboratory grown meat trends; how food safety risks are being mitigated without much historical data.
  • Social media in relation to reports of alleged foodborne illness (iwaspoisoned.com); and public health concerns around social media for foodborne illness reporting.
  • Approaches for reduction of incidences of foodborne illness, advantages/disadvantages of same.
  • CDC FoodNet – not seeing a substantial decrease in foodborne illness, despite all efforts.  How are we doing as an industry? What more can be done? How to interpret trends?

The event concluded after a great round of questions from attendees.

Juliany Rivera CaloBlue Moon Brewing Company