As always at this time of year, the Program Committee has been diligently working to put together a lineup of speakers for the coming season's meetings that will inform and entertain. My not so secret motivation for continuing to accept this responsibility from year to year is to make sure that we have meetings that I want to attend, but my actual goal is to put together programs that will make you, the members, want to attend. Toward that end I wrestle with whether we should build meetings around specific themes or go for some diversity. While thematic meetings will definitely interest a specific subset of the membership, they will have the opposite effect on many others. Diverse topics meetings, on the other hand, may fall victim to the "there's only one speaker I'm interested in" problem. This year I have chosen to go for diversity but any input from you on the subject would be appreciated.

As in recent years, I have scheduled more technical speakers during our afternoon, "Education Seminar", portion of the meeting. The original intent of these sessions was to provide our members with some useful and relevant information and this year's programs continue that emphasis. For dinner we try to have something of a slightly more general interest with a less technical focus. In fact this year our dinner speakers may appeal to others in your companies and perhaps you might consider inviting them to attend.

This note only describes events at the East Coast meetings. The programs for the Midwest Meeting in Cincinnati (April 10, 2003) and the second (or is it third?) Farwest Meeting in Anaheim, California (March 6, 2003) are being put together separately. I am sure that as the year progresses you'll hear more about them. There is also no speaker yet confirmed, or even contemplated, for the IFT breakfast meeting (Tues, July 15, 2003) in Chicago, Illinois. Any ideas in that regard would be appreciated.

• September 12, 2002 - Marriott Hotel, Princeton, NJ
  Education: Dr. Pat Hoffman, Director of Analytical and Information Sciences at McCormick & Co, and Chairman of the FEMA Isotopic Studies Subcommittee, "Detecting Adulteration" - How can we prove that natural raw materials are, in fact, natural? There have historically been a number of approaches, all of which have been circumvented to some degree by wily economic adulterators. So what are the latest methods to ensure the authenticity of our raw materials and how do they work? Is C14 still a useful determination since atmospheric nuclear testing was stopped so long ago? Come and see.
  Education: Dr. Vasilios (Bill) Frankos, a Principal with Environ Corporation, "Self-Affirmed GRAS" - Five years ago the FDA stopped doing GRAS affirmations. GRAS ingredients from beta cyclodextrin to Lutein are now self-affirmed and the FDA may or may not be notified. How this works, the benefits and risks, the differences between GRAS and food additive status, will be discussed by someone who is actually involved in doing these affirmations.
  Dinner: Dr. John Stanton, Professor of Food Marketing at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia and columnist for Food Processing magazine, "Trends and New Products" - Dr. Stanton is a highly sought after marketing consultant who speaks to groups all around the world. He tends to take an approach that, while often contrary to that of his fellow marketers, is firmly grounded in common sense. If you've read his monthly contributions to Food Processing, like one recent installment that was subtitled "when taste and nutrition collide, taste always wins", I am sure that you'll want to hear his take on some of the trends and influences on the food industry (as may your Marketing department…).

• December 5, 2002 - Holiday Inn, Newark, NJ
  Education: Dr. Ken Schrankel, Global Director of Corporate Safety Assurance for IFF, "Safety Evaluation of Food Ingredients" - How are food ingredients tested for safety? What tests are performed and what qualifies as "passing"? How are things done differently in the European Union? How the same? What is being done to standardize the testing and conclusions to pave the way to international harmonization? Our speaker will address these and other aspects of food ingredient safety evaluation.
  Education: Mr. Peter Goggi, Tea Taster for Lipton, Inc."Tea & Tea Tasting" - Tea has been consumed by many cultures for thousands of years but has lately seen a resurgence of popularity. What are the various quality factors that make one tea better or worse than another? What does a professional tea taster do? And how? How do major tea brands differ from one another? Is there a difference in tea chosen for use in ready-to-drink, instant, and bagged? Our speaker will be addressing these and other issues concerning one of mankind's oldest beverage choices.
  Dinner: Mr. Hank Kaestner, Consultant, former purchasing agent for vanilla and spices for McCormick & Co., "Vanilla, Spices, World Travel, and Bird Watching" - Hank has traveled all over the world scouting out crop conditions and expectations for McCormick. He has seen vanilla planted, pollinated, picked, and cured, and will talk about all of those things. As a representative of the world's largest spice company, he has been the honored guest of various growers and governments and can answer such questions for us as "is it really true that the guest has to eat the pigeon's head when it is offered?" "Did the King of Tonga really want you to marry his daughter?" Hank is also a world class bird watcher, a hobby he has regularly indulged on his travels. Put all these things together and an interesting time is assured.

• February 20, 2003 - Holiday Inn, Newark, NJ
  Education: Dr. Richard McGregor, Linguagen Corporation, "Mechanisms of Bitter perception and bitter blocking" - What makes one compound bitter, or sweet, and another not? How does taste really work at the cellular or molecular levels? If someone understood how taste receptors work, could they use that information to create compounds that would block the perception of bitterness without affecting other basic tastes? Our speaker is finding the answers to these questions in a practical, not just theoretical, way. His company has recently applied for a patent on a compound that is an effective, specific, bitter blocker.
  Education: Dr. Yunus Shaikh, founder of Aroma & Fragrance Specialty Chemical Company, "Reactions in Flavors, not Reaction Flavors..." - For most of us flavor chemistry is more of an artistic than a scientific endeavor. We use chemicals but do very little actual chemistry. Many of us do not, in fact, have degrees in chemistry and yet reactions happen. Most of these are unintended and are detrimental to our creations. Dr. Shaikh will be discussing some of the reactions that can occur in raw materials and the mixtures thereof.
  Dinner: Ms. Diane Toops, News and Trends Editor for Food Processing magazine, "New Products and Flavors"- If you read Food Processing magazine you have no doubt noticed the new product reviews done by their children's taste panels. This has to be one of the most honest, occasionally brutal, and often funny regular features in any of our industry publications. Ms. Toops runs this effort for the magazine and she assures me that, yes, the kids really do say those things just the way they are printed. What can we learn from their assessments and preferences concerning various flavors? Come find out.

• May 15, 2003 - Sheraton Hotel at the airport, Newark, NJ
  Dinner: Ms. Maria Soriano, Food Stylist; Mr. Zave Smith, Food Photographer; Ms. Deborah Holljes, Food Set Designer,
"Making it Look Good enough to Eat" - We see pictures of food everyday on menus, advertisements, and packages, but what does it take to create those images? How many cookies do you have to sort through to find the perfect 10 or so for the picture on the box? Is the food in the pictures always even real food? Our speakers work together to create the pictures that are "good enough to eat" and will be talking about some of the tricks of their fascinating trade. You can see a sample of their work on David Michael's website, www.dmflavors.com, and ask yourself how they got all that ice cream in one place at one time.