Institute of Food Technologists

The Institute of Food Technologists or IFT is an international, non-profit professional organization for the advancement of food science and technology. It is the largest food science organization in the world, encompassing almost 18,000 members worldwide as of 2012. It is referred to as "THE Society of Food Science and Technology." Its current president is Roger Clemens of E.T. Horn Company. As food technology grew from the individual family farm to the factory level, including the slaughterhouse for meat and poultry processing, the cannery for canned foods, and bakeries for bread, the need to have personnel trained for the food industry did also. Literature such as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle in 1906 about slaughterhouse operations would be a factor in the establishment of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) later that year.