Privacy Policy

Effective: November 1, 2009

At the Association of Food Industries, Inc. (“AFI”) we recognize privacy is important. This statement applies to all of the products, services and websites offered by AFI only. Any affiliated organizations’ websites are not governed by this statement and visitors to those organizations’ websites should review privacy policies posted on therein for further information.

If you have any questions about this statement, please feel free to contact us through our website or write to us at: Privacy Matters c/o AFI, Inc., 3301 Route 66, Suite 205, Building C, Neptune, New Jersey, 07753.

Collection of Information

We offer a number of services on our website which do not require you to register for an account or provide any personal information to us. In order to provide our full range of services, however, we may collect the following types of information:

Visitor-Provided Information – When you sign up for an account or other service with AFI that requires registration, we collect personal information, such as names, home and work postal/e-mail addresses, when voluntarily submitted by visitors to our website. We may also collect demographic information, such as your ZIP code, age, gender, and preferences. For certain services we also request credit card or other payment account information and billing addresses, which we maintain in an encrypted form on our secure servers or on the secure servers of a third-party payment processing service that is under contract with AFI. The information you provide is used to fulfill your specific requests. We may combine the information you submit under your account with information you submitted elsewhere or with third parties to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services. For certain services, we may give you the opportunity to opt out of combining such information.

If you supply us with your postal/e-mail address, you may receive periodic mailings from us with information on new products, services or upcoming events. If you supply us with your telephone number, you may receive telephone calls from us with information regarding requests or questions you have made.

AFI processes personal information on its servers in the United States of America. We may process personal information to provide our own services. In some cases, we may process personal information on behalf of and according to the instructions of a third-party, such as payment processing service.

Cookies/Tracking Technology – When you visit the AFI website, we may send one or more cookies (small files containing a string of characters) that uniquely identify your internet browser. We use cookies to improve the quality of our service by storing user preferences and by tracking user trends, such as how people use our website and related services. Personal information cannot be collected through the use of cookies or other tracking technology; however, if you previously provided personally identifiable information, cookies may be tied to that information. Aggregate cookie and tracking information may be shared with affiliated third parties. Most internet browsers are initially set up to accept cookies but you can manually set your internet browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent to your computer. Please be advised, however, some features of the AFI website may not function properly if your cookies are disabled entirely.

Log Information – When you use AFI services, our servers automatically record information that your internet browser sends when visiting our website. These server logs may include information such as your web request, Internet Protocol address, internet browser type, internet browser language, the date and time of your request and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your internet browser.

User Communications – When you send e-mail or other communications to AFI, we may retain those communications in order to process your inquiries, respond to your requests and improve our services.

Affiliated Websites – We offer some of our services in connection with other websites. Personal information you provide to those sites may be sent to AFI in order to deliver the service. We process such information in accordance with this statement. The affiliated websites may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies.

Links – AFI may present links in a format that enables us to keep track of whether these links have been followed. We use this information to improve the quality of our online services and advertising.

Information Sharing

AFI only shares personal information with other companies or individuals outside of AFI in the following limited circumstances:

With your consent;
For the purposes of processing personal information on our behalf. We require these parties agree to process such information based on our instructions and in compliance with this statement;

When it is reasonably necessary to:

Satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request;
Detect, prevent or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues; or
Protect against imminent harm to the rights, property or safety of AFI, its users or the public as required or permitted by law; and
If AFI becomes involved in a merger, acquisition or any other form of sale of some or all of its assets.

Registrants to AFI meetings and events understand that publicity photographs may be taken during the event and their image/photographic likeness may appear in photographs taken there. By registering for an AFI meeting, you hereby give permission that photos containing your image/likeness may be used for publicity or general information purposes without compensation, including publication on the AFI web site or within other publicity which may be seen by the general public.

Information Security

We take appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of data. We restrict access to personal information to AFI employees, contractors and agents who need to know that information in order to operate, develop or improve our services. These individuals are bound by confidentiality obligations and may be subject to discipline, including termination and criminal prosecution, if they fail to meet these obligations.

Data Integrity

AFI processes personal information only for the purposes for which it was collected and in accordance with this Statement. We review our data collection, storage and processing practices to ensure that we only collect, store and process the personal information needed to provide or improve our services. We take reasonable steps to ensure the personal information we process is accurate, complete and current, but we depend upon our users to update or correct their own personal information whenever necessary.

When you use AFI services, we make good-faith efforts to provide you with access to your personal information and either to correct this data if it is inaccurate or to delete such data at your request if it is not otherwise required to be retained by law or for legitimate business purposes. We ask that individual users identify themselves and the information requested to be accessed, corrected or removed before processing such requests, and we may decline to process requests that are unreasonably repetitive or systemic, require disproportionate technical effort, jeopardize the privacy of others, would be extremely impractical, or for which access is not otherwise required. In any case where we provide information access and correction, we perform this service free of charge, except if doing so would require a disproportionate technical effort. Some of our services have different procedures to access, correct or delete your personal information.

Enforcement

AFI regularly reviews its compliance with this statement. Please direct any questions or concerns regarding this statement or AFI’s treatment of personal information to us at info@afius.org or by writing to us at Privacy Matters, c/o AFI, Inc., 3301 Route 66, Suite 205, Building C, Neptune, New Jersey 07753. When we receive formal written complaints at this address, it is AFI’s policy to make best efforts to contact the complaining party regarding his or her concerns. When complaints regarding the transfer of personal data cannot be resolved between AFI and the user, we will cooperate with the appropriate regulatory authorities, including local data protection authorities, to resolve same.

Changes to Statement

Please note that this statement may change from time to time. We will use our best efforts to refrain from reducing your rights under this statement and we expect that most such changes would be minor. Regardless, we will post any statement changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice. Each version of this statement will be identified at the top of the page by its effective date and we will also keep all prior versions of this statement in an archive for your review.