The International Food Protection Training Institute (IFPTI), which specializes in standards-based food protection training, was awarded the 2011 NSF Food Safety Leadership Trendsetter Award Wednesday at the Food Safety Summit in Washington, DC.

IFPTI has trained more than 1,300 food protection professionals from 47 states and provided emergency training in response to last year’s BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Each year, the NSF Food Safety Leadership Award recognizes leaders in the food industry who have made a “real and lasting impact” to food safety. Last year, Food Safety News profiled the awardees here.

NSF International wades through nominations from throughout the food safety community and uses an independent panel of food safety experts from academia, industry and the regulatory community to select the winners. Awardees are selected based on creativity, innovation, design and the contributions made to the advancement of food safety.

“Our team is honored to receive this award from NSF International”, said Gerald Wojtala, Executive Director of IFPTI, in a statement. “It is a privilege to be recognized by our colleagues in the food protection community. There is great work being done to integrate the food safety system and training is a key component for its success.”