Dairy champions have been honoured for their leadership, dedication, and commitment to the sector at the International Dairy Federation’s virtual IDF Forum, held ton 3 November.

The winner of The IDF Leader Recognition Award 2020 this year, an award created to increase the recognition of experts for their exemplary involvement and leadership in IDF Work, is Allen Sayler (US), for his role as Chair of the IDF Standing Committee on Food Additives. A long-time contributor to IDF, Mr Sayler has extensive knowledge of food production, processing, food safety and quality assurance programmes. As chair, he has worked determinedly to keep the IDF Standing Committee engaged and productive, as well as ensuring regular reporting and progress from the various Action Teams.

The IDF Prize of Excellence, an award given in recognition of an outstanding (recent) contribution to the Work Programme of IDF. This year the prize was awarded to the IDF Standing Committee on Food Additives’ Action Team on Alignment – Chair Keith Johnston, members Michael Hickey, Nelly Delfaut, Christian Kastrup, Jackie Crichton, Nick Gardner, Yoshinori Komatsu, Osamu Suganuma (JP), Camille Carvalho (FR), Clément Benoist (FR), Cathy Zhang (NZ), Jacco Gerritsen (NL), Peter Wolfs (NL), Allen Sayler and IDF Staff Member Aurelie Dubois.

The Action Team on Alignment was formed by the SCFA in February 2004 at its meeting in Brussels, Belgium because of the difficulties created within the Codex System by having food additives for all foods referenced in the Codex General Standard for Food Additives (GSFA) as well as in the Codex Commodity (food) standards.  These two listings of acceptable food additives conflicted in many cases, causing disruptions and confusion for IDF members that exported or imported dairy products as to which reference was the appropriate one to determine whether an internationally traded dairy product had acceptable or unacceptable food additives.

By driving the alignment process for Codex dairy standards on the agenda of the Codex Committee on Food Additives (CCFA), the IDF Action Team served as the only source of true dairy expertise in the Codex system so that the alignment process did not create unnecessary new food additives being allowed in Codex dairy standards, which could compromise the integrity, nutrition and consumer confidence in dairy products for IDF members.

The work done by IDF has been praised by Codex members and is expected to be completed at the 2021 session of the CCFA.

Caroline Emond, Director General IDF, said: “Each of these winners has demonstrated tangible and valuable achievements, and their technical expertise and dedication is greatly valued by the IDF. We applaud their work and thank them for their consistent commitment to the dairy sector.”