Steve Otwell Named 2007 IFAS International Fellow

GAINESVILLE, FL (Nov. 30, 2007) -- Steve Otwell, a Florida Sea Grant seafood technology specialist whose work has led to innovative and cost-effective responses to issues of seafood safety worldwide, has been selected as an International Fellow in the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) at the University of Florida for 2007.

Otwell is a key architect of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point system, or HACCP, that U.S. seafood importers, distributors and processors use to meet federal food safety regulations. He has been a professor of seafood technology in the university’s Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition since 1979.

Otwell is also one of the founders of the University’s Aquatic Food Products Program, the academic center of technical expertise that is home to the leading domestic and international training program for shrimp processors and regulators worldwide.

The International Fellows Award, established in 2004, recognizes outstanding international endeavors by UF/IFAS faculty members that contribute to the globalization of the university.

Otwell’s work “has helped to raise the visibility and stature of both the University of Florida and UF/IFAS in the international arena,” said IFAS Senior Vice President Jimmy G. Cheek. His programs of seafood safety education and research “have been of great benefit to the citizens of Florida, the U.S. and the world,” Cheek said.

Otwell’s tenure at the university began in an era when the domestic seafood industry supplied much of the state’s and nation’s demand for shrimp, fish, oysters and other seafood products.

Seafood is now a $65 billion industry in the U.S., but its focus has shifted away from supplying wild-caught product to the processing and retailing sectors, a reflection of the nation’s growing dependence on imported seafood and aquacultured products.

“Otwell has adjusted the university’s research and education programs to meet the needs of the changing industry,” according to former Florida Sea Grant director Jim Cato. “He has always had the vision to predict and initiate research and training in advance of the time they need to be implemented.”

Otwell was instrumental in initiating the Seafood HACCP Alliance, a nationwide network of processors, university researchers and government agencies that provides seafood processors and importers with the sanitation training required to market fish and fishery products in the United States. Alliance programs have, to date, graduated more than 30,000 participants from 28 nations.

The aquatic food products program at UF has grown to include six departmental faculty members, numerous graduate students and external research funding exceeding $500,000 annually. The program is housed in the Aquatic Food Products Laboratory that Otwell -- together with Sea Grant, industry, and University Foundation partners -- raised more than $4 million to build in 1994.

“My research approach was strictly applied to solving problems and recognizing commercial opportunities,” Otwell said. “The University of Florida is now recognized as a leading authority in controls for various bacterial pathogens in oysters, prevention of spoilage in shrimp and a variety of monitoring methods for aquatic product quality and safety,” he said.

Otwell earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Virginia Military Institute, a master’s degree in marine science from the University of Virginia and a doctorate in food science from North Carolina State University. In 2004 he was named a Fellow of the Institute of Food Technologists.

Contact:
Steve Otwell, (352) 392-4221