GHI MATTERS YEAR 2021

President's message

Dear Reader,

Although for some readers Christmas is on 7 January, for most readers it was the 25th December. I hope that it has been or will be a happy time.

The past year has not been easy for many or perhaps even most of you. Online teaching has become the norm by now and that usually involves more effort. Despite this, many of you have been very active supporting the objective of GHI: safe food for everyone in this world. The number of membership applications is continually increasing and so is the number of our ambassadors. Several of the working groups have been active and productive. All of this meant an increasing burden for our honorary directors, all of whom do this work in their spare time in addition to their regular professional duties. Without our directors and other officers, spread over the entire globe, GHI would not be sustainable.

We are grateful to the leadership and staff of the high quality, thoroughly peer-reviewed African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development (AJFAND) in which GHI Matters has been incorporated since the beginning of 2021. It gives GHI more exposure and the journal potentially more authors.

A special mention of the work of the working group Global Incident Alert Network who launched in August the first and only truly anonymous whistleblowing webpage in the world and thanks to many active ambassadors, that webpage is now available in more than 30 languages and that number is still increasing. It means that it will be difficult to find an excuse for NOT reporting a serious otherwise unreported food safety incident, wherever it takes place, saving victims from harm or even death.

GHI has many book editors and they too have been productive. Several new volumes of the series "Nutrition and Health Aspects of Traditional and Ethnic Foods" have been published this year and several other new ones are under development. Also, the second edition of "Ensuring Global Food Safety - Exploring Global Harmonization" has been completed and the 2nd edition of "Food Safety Management: A Practical Guide for the Food Industry" has >50 updated and/or new chapters, and is almost ready for production. To support this book, with input from many GHI members, the book "Food Safety Stories" has been produced this year. It contains many real life examples of food safety incidents.

Of course, I need to mention the Editor-in-Chief of GHI Matters, Ben Oloo, who has assumed the responsibility of having an issue of the newsletter every two months, which is a big task. He is to be congratulated on maintaining the schedule required by AJFAND.

Finally, I would like to mention the strong support of members of the GHI Board. Because we are global, board meetings - without exception online this year - means for some of them getting up very early and for other staying up very late, because their participation is so important for wise and legal decisions.

Hopefully you did not suffer from Covid-19 and meanwhile have gotten your vaccinations to keep you free from the disease in the coming year, which again hopefully, we will not suffer from a new pandemic. Therefore, I wish you all a very happy new year’s eve, and a healthy and happy 2022.

Huub Lelieveld, GHI President, December, 2021

The complete newsletter: GHI Matters December 2021 issue

CONTENTS
• President's message
• Editor’s Message

Still interested in joining the Proposed GHI Working Group on Risk Assessment

• Books

		Nutritional and Health aspects of Food in the Balkans
		Food Safety Management: A Practical Guide for the Food Industry, 2nd edition
		Food Safety Stories

• Published Articles by GHI Members

How global nutritional standards could pivot to harmonization for safer foods

• Food laws and regulations around the world
• Events

		20th International Association for Cereal Science and Technology (ICC) conference
		First Joint Food Safety Conference for Africa
		NUTRICON Congress 2022
		IFW 2022 | 3rd International Conference: Insects to Feed the World 2022

• GHI Ambassadors Receive International Recognition and Awards

		Prof. Huub Lelieveld-Science to Society Award by EFFosT-2021
		Dr. Benard Oloo: Visiting International Professional Programs (VIPP) Alumni Award, Michigan State University, Early Career Achievement Award

President's message

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the October 2021 issue of GHI Matters. I hope that you have remained free from Covid-19 and if not, that you have been or are recovering completely. Then, of course, I hope that you will find information in this issue that is important for you to know.

GHI is continually growing and along with that becoming more active. This applies to working groups, editors of GHI books, GHI ambassadors and GHI officers. All of them would be happy with more volunteers to share the workload. Therefore, if you are willing to spend a couple of hours per week to advance GHI's goal of safe and nutritious food for all people in the world, let us know. We would be happy to make you responsible for an important task or arrange for you to work with others to accomplish a larger task.

You will read that the number of GHI ambassadors is increasing (there are >100), more new ambassadors are likely to be appointed shortly. As with members, also the number of ambassadorship applications is growing.

Many ambassadors have translated the anonymous whistleblowing reporting website that will soon be available into >20 languages. More about this in the December issue of the newsletter.

There are announcements of events of which some are live again, such as the EFFoST conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, where GHI has a special session with 8 presenters.

Enjoy reading!

Huub Lelieveld, GHI President, October, 2021

The complete newsletter: GHI Matters October 2021 issue

CONTENTS
• President's message
• Editor’s Message

Proposed GHI Working Group on Risk Assessment

• Books

		Nutritional and Health aspects of Food in the Balkans
		Food safety stories

• Published Articles by GHI Members

How global nutritional standards could pivot to harmonization for safer foods

• The European Commission (EC) and GHI
• Food laws and regulations around the world
• New GHI Ambassador Appointments
• Events

		Valedictory Symposium for Professor O.C. AWORH
		First Joint Food Safety Conference for Africa
		NUTRICON Congress
		EFFoST Annual Conference
		The GHI Special Session at the EFFoST conference
		IFW 2020 | 3rd International Conference: Insects to Feed the World

President's message

Dear Reader,

Regrettable the Covid-19 pandemic is not over yet and it looks like it may take quite some time before the world will be a little bit normal again. It will probably never be completely as before the pandemic; we shall have to get used to the presence of the SARS-Cov-2 virus and its mutations and probably more new viruses. For the shorter term it still means fewer life global events. The next GHI Congress is postponed until an unknown date, as there are just too many uncertainties. It looks like the annual EFFoST conference will take place, this year probably live and it is the intention that GHI make its presence felt, as usual. Regrettably many GHI members from outside Europe who intended to participate are either not allowed to travel to Europe yet or do not yet want to risk traveling in planes as long as the pandemic is not under control. Therefore, regrettably it will largely be only Europeans this time.

In this issue of GHI Matters, you will read a bit more about the anonymous whistle blower's page that the WG Global Incident Alert Network developed and that has attracted quite some media attention. Translations of the webpage are arriving and shortly the webpage will be available in many languages. The same applies to the press release (PR) of 9 August, 2021 and you are encouraged to distribute the PR in the language(s) most suitable for where you live to local food related magazines.

It is my hope that all of you remain free from Covid-19 and if you got the virus, that you will recover quickly and completely. I look forward to see many of you sometime soon again, somewhere.

Take care and kind regards,

Huub Lelieveld, GHI President, August, 2021

The complete newsletter: GHI Matters August 2021 issue

CONTENTS
• President's message
• Editor’s Message

Proposed GHI Working Group on Risk Assessment

• Books

		Food safety management: A practical guide for the food industry, 2nd edition
		Food safety stories
		Nutrition and health aspects of traditional and ethnic food of Eastern Europe
		Food traceability in Jordan

• EFSA publishes the Stakeholders News
• The European Commission (EC) and GHI
• Food laws and regulations around the world
• Whistleblower food safety incident report site
• Project participation

Updates from FoodSafety4EU

• Events

		EFFoST Annual Conference
		IFW 2020 | 3rd International Conference: Insects to Feed the World
		Food BioTech Conference
		MiFFI 2021 Conference - Microbial Food and Feed Ingredients

President's message

Dear Reader,

Regrettable the Covid-19 pandemic is not over yet and it looks like it may take quite some time before the world will be a little bit normal again. It will probably never be completely as before the pandemic; we shall have to get used to the presence of the SARS-Cov-2 virus and its mutations and probably more new viruses. For the shorter term it still means fewer life global events. The next GHI Congress is postponed until an unknown date, as there are just too many uncertainties. It looks like the annual EFFoST conference will take place, this year probably live and it is the intention that GHI make its presence felt, as usual. Regrettably many GHI members from outside Europe who intended to participate are either not allowed to travel to Europe yet or do not yet want to risk traveling in planes as long as the pandemic is not under control. Therefore, regrettably it will largely be only Europeans this time.

In this issue of GHI Matters, you will read a bit more about the anonymous whistle blower's page that the WG Global Incident Alert Network developed and that has attracted quite some media attention. Translations of the webpage are arriving and shortly the webpage will be available in many languages. The same applies to the press release (PR) of 9 August, 2021 and you are encouraged to distribute the PR in the language(s) most suitable for where you live to local food related magazines.

It is my hope that all of you remain free from Covid-19 and if you got the virus, that you will recover quickly and completely. I look forward to see many of you sometime soon again, somewhere.

Take care and kind regards,

Huub Lelieveld, June 2021

The complete newsletter: GHI Matters June 2021 issue

CONTENTS
• President's message
• Editor’s Message
• Anonymous reporting of serious food safety incidents
• World Whistleblower Day
• Obituary of Wentzel Gelderblom
• GHI keeps abreast with developments at EFSA
• Covid-19 and Food translations
• How to share information you feel to be of relevance for other members of GHI
• Articles by members of GHI

		Sunlight-activated spray could protect crops
		COVID-19: Food Safety in global food supply chain
		Halal certifiers webpage

• Halal certifiers webpage
• Regional agribusiness initiatives in the Middle East and North Africa
• Global sodium benchmarks
• Study on remote learning in food studies
• Events

Fi AFRICA 2021 event

• Biofilm and food processing
• World Food Safety Day (WFSD)-2021-reports from around the world

Editor’s Message

Dear Reader,

I hope you have had a chance to read the April, 2021 Issue of GHI Matters available here. We are sharing a short ‘Extra’ supplementary addendum to the issue. The information in this 2-page supplement would not be relevant by the time the June Issue arrives. Kindly take the time to read through this and learn about the call for Food Safety Incidents Stories, the World Food Safety Day, and finally note the correct link to the Presentation about CoVId-19 and Food that was in the last issue of GHI Matters, which was published in the AJFAND.

Benard Oloo, 28th May, 2021

The complete newsletter: GHI Matters May 2021 Extra issue

CONTENTS
• Editor’s Message
• Correction
• Food safety incident stories
• World Food Safety Day

President's message

Dear Reader,

It is a great pleasure to be able to address you for the first time from our "home" journal. You may notice that we have revamped the layout, mostly by removing superfluous information that you can easily find on the GHI website. It is a fresh start, and it is also a pleasure to acknowledge that the new Newsletter Editor has done a great job. It may also be good to know that GHI and AJFAND have worked together to ensure that we remain compliant with the privacy requirements of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as shown on the relevant webpage.

We hope that much of the information in this issue will be of interest to you, such as the downloadable presentation on Covid-19 and food. It is available not only in English but also in several other languages and more shall be forth-coming. It is also my pleasure to congratulate many GHI members for receiving prestigious awards, Ruth Oniang'o, the Editor-in-Chief of AJFAND, Vishweshwaraiah Prakash, Joe Regenstein, Aurora Saulo and Bala Balasubramaniam. Details are below.

I would like to point to the Food Safety Profession proposal, prepared by the Working Group for Ethics in Food Safety Practices. I feel that this is an essential issue to ensure food safety for everyone around the world.

The large number of events are listed that gives you a number of opportunities to participate. Many are hybrid while others are online. Those that are hybrid or online only offer participation to those who would not be able to attend the live events due to the considerable costs to attend. GHI members are also active in writing as you will see. We try to make it easy for readers to download these items. Many of them provide information that you may have missed but will be helpful to know.

There is much more in the newsletter and I hope you will take the time to read GHI Matters carefully so that you can keep informed about what GHI is about. In addition you may want to read articles in this peer-reviewed open access journal. They tend to be very interesting, which is another good reason for choosing AJFAND!

GHI is growing and has many active members. It implies that the workload of GHI officers is continually increasing. That is why you will also find a paragraph about a vacancy for the function of Honorary Communications Director. It is an important opportunity to contribute to a better world. It would be great if you are the one who can and wants to take the responsibility for this essential GHI task.

Huub Lelieveld, 29 April 2021.

The complete newsletter: GHI Matters April 2021 issue

CONTENTS
• President's message
• Editor’s Message
• Affiliation of GHI with the African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development (AJFAND)
• A presentation about Covid-19 and food
• Awards
• Resistance levels in bacteria causing foodborne infections
• Honorary Communications Director vacancy
• Events
• Food Safety Profession proposal - A plan for globally safer food
• Women in Science International Awards
• Newly appointed GHI Ambassadors, 2021
• EFSA Management Board vacancy
• Books, articles and book chapters by GHI and members of GHI on food and nutrient safety and security