The Institute of Food Technologies announced Monday night that the group’s annual onsite meeting and food expo — scheduled for July 12-15 in Chicago — is transitioning into a virtual experience.
IFT said its board of directors made the decision as the best and safest course of action amid the evolving COVID-19 pandemic developments.
“Our industry plays an important role in ensuring the global food supply is safe, nutritious, and sustainable. Due to this, it was important to provide a safe and globally accessible solution to convene our community in their pursuit of advancing the science of food and food innovation — a purpose that is more important today than ever before,” IFT said.
IFT added that its boarded decided to make this decision now to allow time to successfully transition to a virtual platform and allow attendees, exhibitors and stakeholders the time needed to make necessary travel and planning adjustments.
“We are excited about this new virtual direction as it provides our community an even more inclusive opportunity to support IFT's overarching purpose of gathering the global science of food and food innovation community together to share, learn, connect and inspire the future of food,” IFT said.
The group said IFT staff are currently working through details to support the transition and it will be sharing updates via the IFT website and social media sites.
IFT has already rebranded the event logo on its website to “ShIFT20” to reflect the shift in format.
The 2019 IFT event was its 79th occurrence, and had more than 20,000 attendees.
