The International Standards Organization establishes consensus standards in many food, water, and food safety related areas. ISO is a non-governmental organization driven by marketplace needs. Technical Committees drive the process based on a very defined structure, supported by clearly specified rules, requirements, and procedures. This enables a wide variety of people from anywhere in the globe to participate in standard development. Committees are chartered based on industry requests to create standards, often for a developing technology or solution to  establish standard terminology, methods for evaluation and cost analysis procedures that can help a new technology develop by providing common ground for practitioners, developers, and regulators to address issues that the technology might present. Nothing moves forward without consensus, so while this can take several years, the result often brings about substantive changes in technology acceptance, policy shifts, and facilitating regulation. This session will tell the story of one such change – how reuse water for agriculture moved from relatively unknown in Europe in 2014 to promoted, regulated, and specified as a key water and food supply management tool. The ISO Committee brought stakeholders and national standard bodies from 20 countries together to learn from each other and carve what became the foundation of country-specific regulations and policies. This session will also describe the ISO process and explain the key parameters and rules for ISO standards development to familiarize food scientists with opportunities to engage with colleagues from around the world in establishing the foundations for practices that will have a long-term impact on the food system. Speaker: Phyllis Posy, MSc