-: My name is Sarah Brandmeier and I am
the Manager of Scientific and Regulatory Affairs
for the American Frozen Food Institute.
We are a national trade association
and we promote the interests of the frozen
food and beverage industry.
I work pretty closely with the other members at AFFI
or my colleagues at AFFI and I also interact
with our membership and I, as I said,
I work with my team and we really watch
the regulatory landscape, you know,
what's going on in the frozen food industry.
And we really, we watch closely at what's
going on in DC but also more broadly.
For me, I really look at what's happening nutrition-wise
and how that might affect our members
and then go from there.
I work with the rest of the
Scientific and Regulatory Affairs team
and we kind of act accordingly.
If it's a really big issue for our membership
that's kind of when we make the decision
of how we're going to go from there.
I do spend a good portion of my time at the office
but there's also the opportunity to go downtown
into DC and attend different meetings,
attend different conferences and meet
and interact with others in the industry.
So one of the projects that we've worked on
is monitoring the nutrition facts panel
and then assessing how it would affect
our membership and moving forward
and how we would proceed with that issue.
So a lot of the time a member will come to us
and they'll say, "Hey, you know,
"can you look more into this?"
Or, "What does this mean in the regulation?
"Can you help us with this?"
Or, that's kind of how we decide what we're going to do
is we really use our membership
and that's how we move forward.