The BC Food Protection Association is pleased to present an evening focused on the number one cause of foodborne outbreaks - a small and persistent enemy - norovirus! We will host a Spring Speaker's Evening, "Keep Your Business from Going Viral! Understanding and Controlling Norovirus", on May 9th, 2013 at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, 6450 Deer Lake Avenue Burnaby, BC. Early Bird registration will be offered for this event until May 2nd. Please mark your calendars and plan to attend. To register for this event please take advantage of our online registration link.

We will have 3 excellent speakers to review what we know about this virus, why it was such a problem this year, and to provide focus on personnel hygiene, premises cleaning, sanitation and effective disinfection.

To begin, Dr. Natalie Prystajecky, from the BC Centre for Disease Control, will present on norovirus prevalence in BC and worldwide, giving us an overview of how molecular sequencing describes circulating global norovirus strains. She will also review why this virus is so environmentally tough, and where it survives.

Graham Monda, from Rochester Midlands, with over 20 years' experience recommending premise control for food safety, will cover personnel measures and premises cleaning and sanitation to manage norovirus.

Our third speaker, Stephanie Chiu, will present her Masters project from UBC, on the effectiveness of disinfecting agents against 2 norovirus surrogates. Stephanie will describe what chemical agents are effective in controlling norovirus by reviewing log reductions of murine norovirus and feline calicivirus against quaternary ammonium compounds, accelerated hydrogen peroxide and chlorine dioxides (bleach). She will also describe the effect of different contact times, disinfectant concentrations, and the presence/absence of a protein soil load on the efficacy of the selected disinfectants.

The April issue of our newsletter, The Grapevine, is now available via our Newsletter Page. Interested in submitting an advertisement for inclusion in a future newsletter, please see our Newsletter Page for advertising rates. Have an educational article on a relevant food safety topic to share, please contact our Newsletter Editor at newsletter@bcfpa.net.

Have you had a chance to browse an issue of BCFPA Daily Digest[ion]. Catch up on food safety in the news by subscribing and receiving a daily e-mail with a link to view on line. Try it here.

The BC Food Protection Association held our Annual General Meeting on January 23rd, 2013 at the Delta Burnaby Hotel and Conference Centre in Burnaby, BC with over 80 members in attendance. The AGM featured Yemi Ogunrinola, Chief Food Safety Officer, Vantage Foods Inc. speaking about the importance of sanitation in controlling food safety risks in a plant environment. Attendees also enjoyed three student research presentations from both UBC and BCIT. As promised the business portion of the AGM was kept to a minimum. We were very pleased to acknowledge recipients of our annual scholarships and for the first time presented BC Food Protection Association Awards.

Not a member yet? Full details on our membership categories and a membership application can be found on our Membership Info page or click on Join Here at the top right of this page. We invite you to consider becoming part of our association and supporting educational initiatives for food safety and protection. Enjoy preferential rates at functions as well as have priority access to our newsletter and enjoy regular e-mail bulletins on food safety issues and events in the news. New members are always welcome!

Presentations and photos from BC'S FIRST "FULL CHAIN" FARM TO FORK SYMPOSIUM held on November 8th and 9th, 2011 at the Coast Hotel & Convention Centre Langley, BC can now be found on our Events Page and in our Photo Gallery. Over 220 attended the Symposium with a program designed for "Promoting a Culture of Food Safety in BC". We have also created two new pages on our website to host information from the BC Food Safety Stakeholders Group (BCFSSG) and to provide an additional home for Symposium 2011. These Pages can be found from a link on the bottom of the left side menu and from the Conference Page.

Please remember to check out our Sustaining Members page and the links to their sites. The support and contributions of our Sustaining Members are very important to the operation of our association. Check out this video from the Canadian Partnership for Consumer Food Safety Education: How to Be Food Safe Canada?

Should you identify problems with any of our links or with access to any of our documents or have suggestions to improve our site, please send an e-mail to the Membership Coordinator at members@bcfpa.net.