An official website of the United States government.
CIFT is dedicated to the enhancement of the competitive position of the food processing industry through the development and deployment of appropriate technical solutions to problems that adversely affect food quality, food safety, and food processing cost. More specifically, CIFT seeks to develop and support projects that address problems or opportunities as defined by the industry. As in the past, the goal of each CIFT project or activity is to achieve one or more of the following: enhance the quality and consistency of value added food products;increase the safety of a food processing technique, thereby improving the safety or security of value added food products; and decrease the costs associated with the production of a value added food product, thereby increasing the economic performance of its producing sector. CIFT encourages innovation by assisting with projects that are designed to assess the feasibility of emerging techniques and technologies in specific applications, or to perform late stage development and early stage commercialization studies. <P>
Over the past several years, several areas of common and continuing interest have become evident among the industry participants in the CIFT membership consortium. Each of these has become a focal point, or area of specialization, within the CIFT program. It is anticipated that work will continue in these areas, which will include: the use of sensors and advanced process control techniques to improve processing productivity and profitability,the development of functional foods that can be formulated using materials that are extracted or otherwise produced from crops that are grown in significant levels in Ohio and other Midwestern states, the application of new processing techniques to enhance food safety, and the use of new growing and minimal processing systems to support development of local food systems. As is its practice, CIFT will, through its continuing interaction through the food processing industry, develop and complete new projects that reflect both CIFT's objectives and the needs of the industry.
NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: The value-added food processing industry is extremely large in many Midwestern states, including Ohio. In Ohio alone the industry contributes nearly $20 billion to the State?s annual economic product, exclusive of the contributions of supporting industries, such as packaging material suppliers, ingredient suppliers, and equipment manufacturers. From an economic development point of view, processing and adding value to crops grown within a region enhances both farm and manufacturing income, and is therefore an extremely powerful and potent tool for stimulation of that region?s total economic product. The mission of the program is to support the economic output of the industrial sector by providing appropriate technical assistance. This, then, becomes the objective of CIFT in this project; to identify opportunities for problem solving research projects that provide on going economic benefit to a food processing sector in the near term, and to organize and manage those projects to successful completion that results in the implementation of new, novel, or best available technical solutions. The focus of the program is on relatively small, short term, solutions based projects that tend to fall toward the deployment end of the research continuum. The CIFT mission of technology based economic development is particularly relevant due to several trends in American industry. First, the extreme competitiveness of the industry leads to increasing levels of cost control. Unfortunately, some of the costs that are sometimes reduced or eliminated are in the scientific and technical areas, which can cause a lack of innovation within the sector. CIFT has established working relationships with private sector companies, universities, and Federal Laboratories. Secondly, many processing companies, particularly small and medium sized organizations, are extremely risk averse. Technology development possesses, by its nature, elements of financial risk. The CIFT model of feasibility analysis can and does remove the fear of failure from an investment in technology, thereby removing a very significant barrier to innovation. Both of these factors suggest that organizations like CIFT that stimulate technology development, are valuable and necessary for the industry. A guiding principle of the program has always been that the priorities of the research should be developed in an industry driven manner. CIFT maintains a constant dialogue with industry members, large and small, and therefore initiates projects with high levels of industry relevance. CIFT excels at assembling groups of companies and organizations with common technological needs. CIFT will increase its level of interaction with food processors and will identify more problems of common concern to food processors, thereby amplifying the benefit of its research efforts. This will afford an increasingly high number of opportunities to involve multiple food processing companies in CIFT research projects.
<P>
APPROACH: The CIFT program serves two major constituencies. First, it formed a consortium of private sector companies, organizations, and academic institutions several years ago. CIFT depends predominantly on this group to set and amend the research agenda of the program. The technology priorities of the program are guided by the requests that are received from the members of this group, which helps to ensure the industry relevance of all CIFT activities, programs, and projects. CIFT areas of focus are a reflection of the specific issues that face the industry, as represented by the consortium membership. The second major constituency that is served by the CIFT program is the Nation's small and medium sized food processors, who frequently lack access to new and emerging technologies. Since the mission of the CIFT program is economic development and job creation, it is important that CIFT serve these companies, through whom the majority of new jobs are created. CIFT has, and will continue to devote significant efforts to the support of smaller entrants and participants in the food processing industry. The CIFT program seeks to supplement major research activities involving its research partners by providing industry involvement in establishing the research agenda, thereby facilitating the eventual industry acceptance of the technologies, techniques, and technical solutions that are being developed. A number of CIFT projects deal with the demonstration of both technical and economic feasibility. These demonstrations assist in the acceptance of technical results by the industry by removing the fear of failure as an impediment to the acceptance of technical innovation. A clear plan must be submitted that addresses how successful developments will be commercialized. For instance, if one of the partners in the project is not in the business of selling the technology to be developed, a plan to involve an entity or entities that are should be included in the proposal. Prior commitment by a commercialization partner need not be made, but evidence that contingent commitments have been considered will be favorable. A wide range of project areas will be considered. The chief requirement is that the project must have the potential for advancing the technologies used in the processing and/or the packaging of food products. Primary focus will be given to those projects whose end results possess the potential for improving food quality and safety, or for increasing productivity and therefore lowering production costs. The factors favorably affecting evaluation include:a high potential for success in the near term, broad potential applicability throughout the industry, financial support and commitment to implement positive results from the sponsoring company, and all proposals must be accompanied by a thorough professional analysis of the commercial potential that will be made possible by successful completion of the proposed project activity. The potential benefits may include such items as potential jobs created, potential jobs retained, costs avoided, cost savings generated, or potential new sales generated.