FoodSHIELD Announcements

Food&AgDIR New Members in VT and NC

We'd like to welcome two new participants to Food&AgDIR, our database tool for farm-to-table regulatory programs:

• Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets
• North Carolina Division of Environment and Natural Resources

Thank you for your valuable addition to FoodSHIELD!

To see a map of all Food&AgDIR participants, click here or under Participation Maps in the left sidebar.

Contact us to find out more about joining FoodSHIELD and Food&AgDIR.

LabDIR New Member in Indiana

We'd like to welcome a new participant to LabDIR, our database tool for laboratories:

• Indiana State Department of Health Laboratories

Thank you for your valuable addition to FoodSHIELD!

To see a map of all LabDIR participants, click here or under Participation Maps in the left sidebar.

Contact us to find out more about joining FoodSHIELD and LabDIR.

More Web Meeting Resources

We recently posted a video tutorial demonstrating how FoodSHIELD members can quickly set up a web meeting.

Here are some additional resources by Adobe that explain the web meeting environment and how to successfully conduct that meeting.

1. Macromedia Breeze Quick Start Guide - this covers:
   
   • Sharing Files
   • Sharing Your Screen with Attendees
   • Broadcasting Audio
   • Broadcasting Video
   • Recording a Meeting, among other topics
 
2. System Requirements - a list of the computer system requirements to participate in a meeting
   
   
3. Meeting Connection Test - a diagnostic test of your computer system to ensure you and your fellow participants will be able to connect to the meeting.

Video Tutorial: Create a Workgroup

Along with web meetings, workgroups are among our most popular member tools. Workgroups provide a way to collaborate with a group of people in a secure way.

Workgroups can have their own file folder for sharing documents, and their own calendar for creating tasks and events.  Workgroups can also create their own web meetings. And FoodSHIELD makes it easy to send an e-mail to the whole participant list right from within the site.

View this short tutorial to find out more:

Tutorial: Create a Workgroup (run time 02:40)

Video Tutorial: Create a Web Meeting

One of the popular tools FoodSHIELD provides to its members is the ability to create and conduct a web meeting. 

Web meetings offer a secure way to allow all participants see the same thing at the same time, such as presentations, documents, or web pages.

FoodSHIELD uses Adobe Connect, a powerful yet simple web conferencing system that makes quick work out of creating a meeting and inviting participants.

View this short tutorial to find out more:

Tutorial: Create a Web Meeting (run time 03:21)

Video Tutorial: Logging into FoodSHIELD

Logging into FoodSHIELD for the first time is easy. To understand more about the process, we've created a short video demonstration (run time: 01:16). Click the link below to launch the video.

Tutorial: FoodSHIELD Login

Find out more about FoodSHIELD membership in the About section of our home page.

FAS-CAT System

FoodSHIELD is proud to host access to a new system release from the National Center for Food Protection and Defense (NCFPD). 

FAS-CAT stands for Food Agriculture Sector Criticality Assessment Tool.  This tool is an advanced Excel application that helps identify critical assets in the food and agriculture sector and provide reporting mechanisms to Homeland Security.

Its objectives are:

• Improve the overall process for food and agriculture critical system/sub-system identification
• Provide greater equity in cross sector critical system identification for DHS
• Enable the states to identify critical food and agriculture system components
• Provide a common methodology to the process
• Improve critical asset reporting to Homeland Security

For those requiring access to this tool, the Excel Application and PDF guidance document are available from either FoodSHIELD or NCFPD's home pages.   The Video Tutorial that walks you through a demo of the tool is also available at those locations.

New announcements format

FoodSHIELD has adopted a new format for delivering news to visitors and members of our site. This  format offers many advantages:

• Flexible format doesn't sacrifice content for space. Some news items are short and simple, other items call for more detailed information. Now you can get a quick look at all the latest news on our main page and longer notices continue on their own separate pages.
• Featured material is easily accessible. Documents like participation maps and brochures, as well as  quick links, are quickly accessed from their permanent home in the top left of the page.  No more scrolling to find them.
• All items are archived with permanent links. Each news item is now a separate page that remains in the archive with a permanent link, so visitors can quickly search for older items. You can also search by date and by category. Bad links and missing news items are a thing of the past.
• Get FoodSHIELD news delivered to you. Anyone can subscribe to a news feed of the FoodSHIELD Announcements by entering our RSS feed (http://news.foodshield.org/index.rdf) into an RSS reader. (New to RSS? Find out more by visiting What is RSS?)
• Comments allow for feedback and dialog.  Most news items will be open for comment by our readers, who can let us know what they think about an item.

This announcements page is where we will introduce new site features, spotlight new FoodSHIELD members, and generally keep our visitors informed about the FoodSHIELD system and its projects. And some of the items from our old announcements page are being entered into this blog archive for easy reference. We hope you check back regularly for all the latest news.