This ICUMSA News is printed a bit late in comparison with the usual deadline. This is due to the fact that, as widely published in the previous ICUMSA News, as well as in our website (www.unife.it/icumsa), on April 8th and 9th we held in Atlanta, Georgia, USA the first Interim Meeting of the 23th Session following the SPRI Meeting 2004.
The US National Committee and the team of the SPRI (led by Mary An Godshall, Managing Director of SPRI and ICUMSA’s Referee) have perfectly managed the organization of the meeting, preceded by the Coca-Cola tour held in the morning of Wednesday April 7th .
58 delegates coming from 20 countries attended the meeting. We enjoyed two very busy days with an even heated discussion which guarantees the vitality of our Commission. The problem of the methods of determination of the sugar colour has been definitively solved thanks to a demanding ring test proposed by Geoff Parkin, the Referee of the Subject 2 – White Sugar – and the work carried out by a special commission which prepared the Recommendations which were unanimously accepted by the assembly.
This message doesn’t intend to present a detailed report of the meeting, report which will be published in the Proceedings which will be printed in the very next future together with a new Supplement containing the revised, updated or new methods.
You will even find in the Proceedings what has been discussed and decided in the meeting of the Executive Committee at the end of the Session. However, I would like to announce that it was decided to repeat in 2006 the favourable experience we had in Atlanta, that is a meeting again connected to the SPRI Meeting which will be hold in Brazil, probably in San Pedro, a pleasant touristic place in the boundaries of Piricicaba, not very far from San Paulo. The Executive Committee has therefore decided to hold short meetings every two years in conjunction with another important international meeting. This choice will give us the possibility of meeting more frequently and in the meantime of limiting as much as possible the costs dealt with by our Commission, the National Committees and the various Companies.