RFA Symposium

2008 RFA Symposium & Tour Draws Record Number of Attendees

Mark Crowell of CuliNex, LLC spoke on natural and organic food products, explaining the current definitions of the terms and providing guidance on government regulations concerning the labeling and certification of these products.

A record number of attendees participated in this year’s RFA Symposium & Tour, held September 16-17, 2008, in Chicago, Illinois. A total of 63 members took part in the seminar, with 27 of the members attending the full two days of events. The record attendance combined with the outstanding content and educational tours made the event one of the RFA’s best thus far.

“The 2008 Marketing and Technical Symposium was an unqualified success – excellent content, great networking, everything you would expect,” said RFA President Jerry Shafir.

Organized by the newly-formed Industry Development Committee, led by Co-Chairmen John Bowles and Jason Dobis, and the Technical Committee, led by Chairman Steve Loehndorf and Technical Director Martin Mitchell, the RFA Symposium was a two-day event featuring two separate tracks – an Industry Development track on Tuesday that focused on business and marketing topics and a Technical track on Wednesday that focused on food safety topics. Each track combined expert speaker presentations with educational tours to offer attendees a unique learning experience. Members had the option of attending just one of the full-day tracks or staying for the full two days for no extra charge.

The Symposium began on Tuesday with the Industry Development track. The focus of the first part of the day was commodities, and the group traveled to the CME Group for a full tour of Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade. Attendees learned about the organizations and their operations and got the chance to see the chaos of commodity trading firsthand from the viewing gallery.

Steve Loehndorf, Arezou Rahabari, Martin Mitchell and John Bowles enjoy good company on Tuesday evening.

After the tour, the group returned to the hotel for an insightful presentation by Joe Victor, the vice president of marketing for Allendale, Inc., a leading commodities consulting firm. Mr. Victor explained the current commodity market conditions and discussed how continuing world market situations should affect the prices we will pay in the future. He provided "when to buy or when to book" charts that can help as companies make decisions over the coming months.

Due to a last-minute cancellation of the scheduled speaker, Greg Stephens, the vice president of strategic consulting for the Natural Marketing Institute, called in and gave an audio presentation on current health and wellness trends in foods, providing insights into consumer behavior in relation to healthy and natural foods and how labeling and packaging can be used to impact consumers’ perceptions regarding the healthiness of a product.

The final presentation of the day was by Chris MacGrory of IPL, Inc. Chris discussed the topic of sustainability, addressing the facts and myths surrounding the concept and explaining how companies can implement and measure the bottom line value of green programs.

“Chris' approach to sustainability put things into a new perspective for me,” said John Bowles of Atlantic Coast Marketing. “He showed us how to cost out sustainability projects and his comparison to health care was most useful in looking for progress in this area.”

Dr. Skinner, a microbiologist at The National Center for Food Safety and Technology, gave a presentation to the Technical track attendees on microorganisms of significance in refrigerated foods, focusing on food safety aspects of hot processing and resultant concerns about spore forming organisms.

On Tuesday evening, Symposium attendees were treated to a special dinner cruise, thanks to the generous sponsorship of PURAC America, Inc. The cruise was a great way to unwind in the evening and gave members the chance to socialize with each other in a more informal setting.

The Technical track of Symposium began on Wednesday morning with a tour of The National Center for Food Safety and Technology (NCFST), a research consortium where the food industry works collaboratively on projects with FDA scientists on food safety and technology research. The tour was followed by two important speaker sessions - Dr. Skinner, an expert NCFST microbiologist, gave a presentation on microorganisms of significance in refrigerated foods, focusing on food safety aspects of hot processing and resultant concerns about spore forming organisms and Mark Crowell of CuliNex spoke on natural and organic food products, explaining the current definitions of the terms and providing guidance on government regulations concerning the labeling and certification of these products. In the afternoon, the Technical track attendees traveled to Sterigenics’ Food Irradiation Facility, where they had a chance to observe the food irradiation process up-close and gain firsthand knowledge of this food safety technology. The Symposium concluded after the tour.

Technical track attendees had the opportunity to take an in-depth tour of the Sterigenic's Food Irradiation Facility.

In the post-event evaluations, attendees noted the overall content and value of the seminar was excellent. The speakers were highly rated and several members noted that the topics discussed were timely and well-targeted to their businesses.

“This year’s fall symposium was well crafted suiting to the needs of the RFA members,” commented Venkat Munukutla of Basic American Foods. “The presentations on both days and the tours to the Chicago Board of Trade and the Sterigenics Irradiation Facility were well worth visiting.”

“I was very pleased with content of this Symposium and the very good attendance that we had,” said Steve Loehndorf of Reser’s Fine Foods. “We were able to learn about and experience many new aspects of the refrigerated foods business that affect our jobs on a daily basis – knowledge that would be difficult or impossible to come by in our individual companies. This is a major benefit of belonging to the RFA, and as always, the opportunities to network and share thoughts, ideas and problems at this Symposium were invaluable.”

The networking aspect of the seminar was also highly praised. “The outstanding content along with the incredible networking opportunities with CEO's, Technical Directors and Associates make the fall Symposium almost as much of a "can't-miss " event as the annual spring RFA Conference,” noted John Bowles.

Thanks to all the members that attended this year’s Symposium and to the Technical and Industry Development Committees for their planning and organization of the event. Also, special thanks to PURAC America for sponsoring the special dinner cruise on Tuesday night.

Tuesday's evening dinner cruise was a great way to unwind and gave members the chance to socialize with each other in a more informal setting.

Slide presentations from most of the speaker sessions are now available in the Members-only Section. Click here to go to the download page.

Attendees gathered for a photo aboard the Odyssey cruise ship. Special thanks to PURAC America for sponsoring the evening cruise.