EHEDG Showed Me How 3-A Can Put Its Standards and the Volunteers Behind Them in the Spotlight

I came home from the European Hygienic Engineering & Design Group (EHEDG) World Congress in Vienna, Austria, last month convinced that 3-A SSI should showcase our recently updated standards, the working group volunteers who revise them and practical ways processors, regulators and manufacturers can use them. The Summit Task Force is already working on ways to do exactly that. Three things from the week shaped my thinking.

EHEDG Makes Its Working Groups Visible, and It Works. Presentations throughout the congress highlighted what EHEDG's working groups have accomplished, giving attendees a clear view of the people and progress behind the guidance. More than 30 poster presentations also covered hygienic design research from universities, private institutions and companies. Both formats show that hygienic design is an active field, and 3-A's work belongs in that picture.

Interest in the U.S. Dairy System Is Real, and It Goes Beyond the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO) Itself. Chris Hylkema, chair of 3-A SSI, and I held a short fireside session, "Inside the US Dairy Market: A Regulator's Field Perspective." I moved through the room asking Chris questions, then invited attendees to put theirs directly to him. The curiosity was strong, especially about how states take different approaches to handling and enforcing the PMO. We could have gone well beyond our time. That kind of curiosity is an opening for 3-A to share what we know. Thank you, Chris, for bringing a regulator's perspective to an international audience.

It Was a Pleasure to See Symbol Holders in Person and to Meet Some of Their European Team Members. I briefly visited with about a dozen Symbol Holder companies at their booths and reconnected with EHEDG leadership and several members of their team. It was great to see other familiar 3-A faces, too, including Certified Conformance Evaluators Andy Timperley and Sharif Udin, and Laura Burke, co-chair of the 3-A Summit Task Force.

Watch the 3-A SSI 2027 Summit on Hygienic Design website for updates on how we will showcase the updated standards and the volunteers behind them at next year's event.