The International Association of Food Protection (IAFP) hosted its flagship event, the 2025 Annual Meeting, in Cleveland, Ohio this July, bringing together thousands of global food safety professionals to tackle existing and future food safety issues. 

NC Food Innovation Lab’s Food Safety Manager Robert Price not only attended this important event but also joined a panel discussion focused on improving the culture of food safety. Here are his highlights from IAFP’s 2025 Annual Meeting: 

Plant-Based Proteins + Ingredient Safety

While global acceptance of plant-based meat continues to grow and greater diversity of meat analogues is available, food safety and quality guidelines or specifications for these meat products and other plant-based products, including cheese, milk and spreads, is scarce. 

Traditionally, testing and specifications for conventional products was used for plant-based products, but these methods might not be appropriate due to the difference in ingredients and food matrices. To ensure that adequate lethality and shelf life is being met, food companies and testing facilities need to validate the test methods currently used for plant-based meats and products and determine if a challenge-study is necessary. 

Novel Ingredients Food Toxicology Safety

The rapidly evolving space of novel and “functional” ingredients used in the production of food has resulted in an increase in recalls and outbreaks related to unforeseen chemical hazards like psychoactive compounds, such as the multi-state Diamond Shruumz outbreak. The emerging risks of psychoactive compounds have resulted in an increased need for historically unused or underutilized food toxicologists to have a larger role in food safety outbreaks and investigations. 

With growing interest in “functional” ingredients not ending any time soon, food safety professionals must take an active role in evaluating the chemical safety of ingredients. We must also work harder to communicate potential risks to new entrepreneurs and start-ups who enter the food sector to create these “functional” health products. Food safety professionals and manufacturers play an important role in collaborating with state and federal regulators and food toxicologists to evaluate the safety of novel ingredients and to address new concerns regarding psychoactive compounds to the consumer. 

Frozen Food Safety 

To address climate change issues, research is being conducted to determine if standard frozen foods temperatures (-18°C or 0°F) can be increased to improve energy consumption while maintaining safe storage conditions. While a three degree increase from -18°C to -15°C would result in ~6% reduction of energy consumption, the question of spoilage and pathogenic growth at higher frozen temperatures needs to be studied more. 

Food Safety Myth-Busting

Public trust in science, especially in the food section, has declined in recent years. The scientific community and food producers need to help improve public perception. We can solve global food problems, but if we do not effectively communicate our efforts, we may face insurmountable resistance. With the many available technological options, food safety professionals must meet the public where it is and communicate in a way that makes sense to them, so we can combat the readily available misinformation. 

Advancing Food Safety Culture & Education 

Food companies need to do a better job advancing their food safety cultures and food safety education programs for employees – this was a recurring theme throughout the IAFP meeting. Every team member plays a role in food safety, from the hourly employee to the C-suite, so leadership must give people a reason to care about food safety. Having employees complete training to simply check a box is not adequate and will not result in cultivating a positive food safety culture. It’s important to communicate with employees to determine what is and isn’t working in a company’s food safety program. 

Learn more about NCFIL’s approach to food safety: start a conversation here.