Dr. Mickey Parish assumed the presidency of the International Association for Food Protection at the conclusion of IAFP 2017 in Tampa, Florida.

President Mickey Parish is Senior Science Advisor in the US Food and Drug Administration’s (US FDA) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), where he has been since 2009, after a successful 23-year academic career. In this role, Dr. Parish has oversight responsibilities for the CFSAN research enterprise, and addresses issues related to science policy. He was also involved in the implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).
An IAFP Member since 1984, Dr. Parish has served on several committees, including as an Editorial Board member for the Journal of Food Protection since 2003 and on the Program Committee from 2011–2014. He also served as Co-Chair of the Microbial Modelling and Risk Assessment Professional Development Group (PDG) and as Vice-Chair of the Food Law PDG. In addition, Dr. Parish has organized and/or convened several IAFP symposia on topics such as Food Safety Risk Ranking, Pathogen Data Sharing, and Safe Food Handling, and has been an invited presenter at numerous IAFP symposia.

Dr. Parish received a B.S. in Biological Science from Florida State University and an M.S. in Food Science from the University of Florida. He holds a Ph.D. in Food Science, with a minor in Microbiology, from North Carolina State University, where he also completed a one year post-doctorate working on genetics of lactic acid bacteria.