UF Dean McLellan Elected President of Global Food Organization’s Board of Directors

By:
Tom Nordlie (352) 392-0400

Source:
Mark McLellan mrm1@ufl.edu, (352) 392-1784

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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — When world food-production leaders want to know the latest in research, regulation and retailing, they gather at Food Update, an international meeting held each April – and next year, leadership duties for the event will be turned over to Mark McLellan, dean for research and director of the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

At the most recent Food Update, held April 24 in Fort Myers, Fla., McLellan was voted president-elect of the board of directors for the Food Update Foundation, a nonprofit organization that produces the meeting. The foundation is a coalition of food-industry executives, academic leaders and government officials committed to facilitating constructive discussion on food processing and policy.

“I am proud to be elected to this leadership role,” said McLellan, who will begin his one-year term of office at the 2007 meeting. “The Food Update Foundation offers a very special forum for world leaders in food.”

Food Update is the foundation’s principal activity, he said. At the meeting, experts educate each other about new trends in food processing and food service, current food-science issues, quality assurance, regulation and global and domestic policies to assure the consumer marketplace is well served.

As president, McLellan will supervise planning for Food Update, and oversee the foundation’s budget and programs. One of his goals is improving communication between the foundation’s three main constituencies – government, industry and academia.

“The foundation is really about building relationships,” he said. “I want to maximize our potential there, because the result will be better food systems, better science and better regulation, so everybody benefits.”

McLellan has been a member of the board for more than a decade. His other past activities with the foundation have included providing individual scientific presentations and moderating discussions on far-ranging issues affecting the food system.

Appointed to UF in 2005, McLellan has a long history of leadership in the food sector, including previous senior-level posts at Cornell University and Texas A&M University. He is a past president of the 28,000-member Institute of Food Technology; earlier this year he was named chairman of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Food Advisory Committee, the nation’s top governmental consulting body on food issues.

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Posted: May 8, 2006


Category: UF/IFAS



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