Event: IAOM 3rd Annual Southeast Asia District Conference & Expo

Philippines sunset (Photo credit: FriskoDude)

We have just been given this update on the IAOM 3rd Annual Southeast Asia District Conference & Expo, Manila, Philippines, October 8-10, 2012.  Unfortunately, none of of us here at the Global Miller can attend but we will be sending over a stack of GFMT magazines so look out for them.

This year the organisers are expecting more than 200 milling professionals from across the Southeast Asia region to participate in the two-day conference and expo and pre-conference workshop. This event will bring together industry professionals for three days of educational programming, networking, the exchange of ideas, and the discovery of new products and services.

Registrants will be able to attend the educational sessions, expo, all lunches and receptions, dinner on Tuesday evening, and the pre-conference workshop on food safety. The tentative schedule is as follows:

Monday, October 8
Pre-conference Workshop – “Food Safety” presented by Dr. Jeff Gwirtz, JAG Services.
The IAOM Food Safety pre-conference workshop will provide both the operative miller and the mill manager an understanding of Food Safety programs and their importance in the milling sector. The workshop will provide an overview of Food Safety and its components in a global context. It will also cover various organisations and their basic methods for implementing food safety.

Dr. Jeff Gwirtz, owner of JAG Services and former Kansas State University professor, will lead the class. Some of the course topics include: Components of a Food Safety Program, Good Manufacturing Practices, Third-party Audits and Certification, Global Food Safety Initiative, International Organization for Standards (ISO), British Retail Consortium (BRC), and HACCP.

To register for the workshop and conference, go to the IAOM SEA Conference online registration. If you plan to attend the workshop, select the option “I plan to attend the pre-conference workshop on Monday, October 8.”

Mill Tour – Philippines
Philippine Foremost Milling Corporation has kindly agreed to host participants of the 3rd Annual IAOM Southeast Asia District meeting for a mill visit in Manila on Wednesday, 10 October. The tour will highlight the operational and quality aspects of wheat flour fortification.

This is a great opportunity for millers from across the region to visit a modern mill that has fortified wheat flour for many years. In the Philippines, fortifying wheat flour with vitamins and minerals has been mandatory for more than 10 years.

Separate registration for the visit to the Philippine Foremost Milling Corporation is required. Participation is limited to 80, and will be registered on a first-come, first-served basis. To join the mill visit, send an email by 30 September with the following details to Ms. Annoek van den Wijngaart from the Flour Fortification Initiative at: annoek@publicnutritionsolutions.com:

- Name
- Company
- Job Title
- Email address
- Handphone number
- Preference for 2 p.m. or 4 p.m. mill visit

Only participants who register by the 30 September date will be able to join.

The Flour Fortification Initiative (FFI) is a network of partners working together to make flour fortification a standard milling practice so that people worldwide are smarter, stronger and healthier. Vitamins and minerals, or micronutrients, are a small part of people’s diets, but deficiencies in these essential nutrients can lead to tremendous problems such as lack of productivity, loss of intellectual capacity and reduces resistance to infection which increases the risk of disease and death. Globally more than 2 billion people suffer from micronutrient deficiencies.
 
Fortification of wheat flour with vitamins and minerals has proven to be an effective and inexpensive way to overcome micronutrient deficiencies. Currently 74 countries have legislation that requires fortification of wheat flour.

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