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AOCS Protein and Co-Products Division
Newsletter October 2007

Message from the PCP Division Secretary-Treasurer
Phil Kerr

As my Protein and Co-Products Division Board responsibilities shift from Industry At-Large member to Secretary-Treasurer I want to take this opportunity to introduce myself as well as create the environment whereby our division membership can help influence the direction and content of our newsletter. Our common goal should be to use this powerful tool to help advance the oilseed processing industry and the global customers of its products, service and information. In addition, we'll want to use it to celebrate the successes of the division and its members and use it to help further the professional development of our members. One of my roles for the PCP Division board is to serve as division newsletter editor and I look forward to helping the division in this role and others to enhance our growth and impact on the industry.

Collectively we face significant challenges as an industry: meeting a global population's needs for safe, nutritious products while continually meeting the ongoing challenges to enhance the sustainability of manufacturing these products with increasingly scarce resources. For perspective, I have been a member of the AOCS and PCP Division for almost two decades. In the time that I have been a member of our division, the world's population has increased by almost two billion. Using World Health Organization estimates of the yearly, minimum nutritional requirements for humans, the amount of protein needed to sustain this increase in world population is comparable to the amount of protein produced by the entire soybean industry of the United States annually. PCP Division members that are just now starting their careers will face a world with a population of 9 or 10 billion people. So as we face the ongoing challenge of meeting the nutritional needs an increasing world population, where is the additional protein going to come from? What technologies need to be discovered and commercialized to do this in the most efficient and environmentally sustainable way? Surely technical innovation in oilseeds and their proteinaceous co-products will play an increasingly important role in meeting the future needs of our population.

Projected world population over time.

Our division must play a key role in helping shape the technical innovations that will be needed to meet these challenges at the scale needed for a growing, global base of consumers. Discoveries will need to come from all regions of the world and all segments of the oilseed processing industry. Collaborations between PCP Division scientists from academia, industry and government organizations will be required to be effective in addressing the needs for knowledge, services, processes and products. Our newsletter will help identify the contributions our members are making to help drive this technological innovation and identify opportunities for collaborations among our members.

I welcome your thoughts how the newsletter can continue to meet your needs for timely, important information. While much of it will focus on our annual meeting and its technical program, I welcome your suggestions for topics of interest, and certainly welcome volunteers that want to contribute to the newsletter! I can be reached at pkerr@solae.com.

Best regards,

Phil Kerr
Secretary-Treasurer
AOCS Protein and Co-Products Division

Also in this newsletter:

Message from the Chair, by Keshun Liu

ADM awards

Pending Elections

Need Your Suggestions on Book Projects

AOCS, 2710 S. Boulder, Urbana, IL 61802-6996 USA