The President of the Congress was Lord Rank who crystallised informal discussions that had already been taking place among a number of food scientists from around the world when he stated in his presidential message: "If the potentialities of ... food science and technology are to ... culminate and nutritionally adequate, then there must be international collaboration."
The Glasgow symposium, to which food scientists from many nations were invited, was financed by a substantial grant from the Office of the Science Adviser to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO.
One evening following dinner during the Glasgow symposium, Professors Hawthorn and EC Bate-Smith invited a group to meet to discuss the concept of an international food science society.
The group included Emil Mark and George Stewart from Davis, California, a fellow Canadian Bill Geddes, Dean of Agricultural Biochemistry at the University of Minnesota, Professor H D Kay from the dairy research institute at Reading, Tim Anson, an American employed with the Lever Organisation.
The subsequent history of IUFoST is amply recorded in the archives, but perhaps not everyone is aware of NATO's early intervention.
By Joseph H. Hulse, Past President, IUFoST In response to a shift in research focus among food scientists and technologists towards combating chronic hunger problems in the less developed world, IUFoST released its ‘Budapest Declaration’ during its 9th General Assembly in Budapest, Hungary, 1995.
To do this, IUFoST declared its commitment to work with all other organisations to ensure sustained nutritional well-being for all people in a peaceful, just and environmentally safe world.
[2] As the global food science and technology organization IUFoST has special consultative status with FAO.