It's not often that one gets to participate in truly groundbreaking work to improve lives. But with key support from our donors, industry and research partners, staff, consultants and volunteers, I've had the pleasure of seeing the public and private sectors working together in new and exciting ways to provide more nutritious foods for malnourished people worldwide.

We at SUSTAIN believe that food science and technology can play an important role in improving nutrition, particularly when the public and private sectors cooperate on multiple levels. Nutritional initiatives, if integrated with commercial food systems, can be cost-effective means of reaching a wide segment of the population.

The level of public/private as well as international cooperation underlying SUSTAIN's activities was little more than a theory just a few years ago. But today, in projects as close to home as Central America and as far away as Russia, that theory is a new reality.

Consider Central America and Mexico, where iron deficiency anemia affects millions of people and particularly threatens the health of women and children. Over the past several years, SUSTAIN has worked closely with governments, industries, and the international research community to advance iron fortification initiatives in the region. Critical to further progress is broader and more rigorous knowledge of how different forms of iron perform as fortificants in one of the region's new food staples corn masa flour (used to make tortillas). SUSTAIN has sponsored research to address these questions, and is making the new knowledge widely available, thus helping to ensure success and cross sector support for fortification initiatives.

Private Industry. Government. SUSTAIN. A great combination.

As you tour our website, you'll find cross-sector collaborations behind most of SUSTAIN's activities. For example, scientific studies from 1998-2000, showing variability in the fortification of U.S. food aid commodities shipped overseas, depended on input from a wide range of public and private organizations. SUSTAIN's more recent work on evaluating the bioavailability of elemental iron fortificants (currently the most widely used iron fortificants worldwide) first required gaining consensus among leading scientific experts on how to address long-standing questions about these products. Industry has contributed samples and expertise to new efforts to rigorously evaluate the performance of elemental iron powders.

You'll also find on this website, descriptions of other activities, programs and publications. There is a great deal of exciting, cutting edge work being done, and we are proud of SUSTAIN's role in improving nutrition throughout the developing world. Touring our website, we think you'll see why.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Turner,
Executive Director