U.S. Grains Council Privacy Notice

Effective Date: Sept. 14, 2018

This Privacy Notice (“Notice”) describes how U.S. Grains Council (“We”, “Our” or “Us”) collects, processes, and protects personal information in association with:

the website, https://grains.org/;
other digital services owned and operated by U.S. Grains Council;
promoting and maintaining membership services

The Notice also describes your choices regarding use, access and correction of your personal information. Personal information is information, or a combination of different types of information, that could reasonably allow you to be identified.

Personal information We Collect

You can generally visit our website without actively revealing any personal information about yourself. However, in certain areas of the website, to provide our services, and for membership purposes, we may ask you to provide personal information. In these cases, we will collect personal information from you as described below.

The categories of information we may collect from you include the following:

Personal details (e.g., first name, last name, date of birth, emergency contact information, allergies);
Contact details (e.g., personal email address, mailing address, telephone number, mobile telephone);
Employment details (e.g., job title, company name, company mailing address, office phone number, fax number, company website address, affiliations, subsidiaries, company email address)
Travel details (e.g., passport information, visa information, flight information, hotel reservations)

We will inform you if you are required to provide information to obtain access to certain services, register for events, become a member, or renew a membership. If you do not provide the information requested (e.g., username and password, email address, or name), we may not be able to provide you with the content or services requested.

We may obtain personal information about you from your employer or from other organizations with which you are associated.

We also collect some categories of information from you automatically, including data collected using cookies and other device-identifying technologies (‘Cookies and Tracking Technologies’). Further information about our use of Cookies and Tracking Technologies is available in our Cookies Policy (www.grains.org/cookies).

Special Categories of Personal Information

Some of the categories of information we process in connection with provision of our services may constitute special categories of personal information (also known as sensitive personal information). In particular, we may process personal information revealing racial or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical, or political beliefs, or data concerning health, such as medical history.

We only collect this information when you choose to provide this to us or to a service provider such as a travel agent. We use this information to provide a service you request such as event registration or travel arrangements involving visa applications.

How We Use Your Personal Information And The Basis On Which We Use It

We may use your personal information for the following purposes:

Identification and authentication: We use your identification information to verify your identity when you access and use our services, register for or renew membership, attend events and to ensure the security of your personal information. This is so we can comply with our contractual obligations to you.
Operating the services and providing requested services: We process your personal information to provide the services and content you have requested, to maintain your membership, to coordinate the events you attend and to make travel arrangements. For example, we use your personal information to organize your travel and operate the events you register for and attend. This is so we can comply with our contractual obligations to you.
Improving our services: We analyze information about how you use our services to provide an improved experience for our customers of all our services, including event registration and attendance, and maintaining records of membership]. It is in our legitimate business interests to use the information provided to us for this purpose, so we can understand any issues with our services and improve them.
Communicating with you: We may use your personal information when we communicate with you, for example if you contact us with questions, have registered for our services, or if we need to contact you about your membership or the events for which you have registered. It is in our legitimate interests we are able to provide you with appropriate responses and provide you with notices about our services. We may contact you regarding services and events that may be of interest to you. Where necessary, we will obtain your consent before sending such communications.
Exercising our rights: we may use your personal information to exercise our legal rights where it is necessary to do so, for example to detect, prevent and respond to fraud claims, intellectual property infringement claims or violations of law.
Complying with our obligations: we may process your personal information to, for example, carry out carry out fraud prevention checks or comply with other legal or regulatory requirements, where this is explicitly required by law. or comply with other legal or regulatory requirements, where this is explicitly required by law.

How And When We Share Your Personal Information

We may share your personal information with third parties under the following circumstances:

Service providers and business partners: we may share your personal information with our service providers and business partners that perform services and other business operations for us for the purposes set forth above. For example, we may partner with travel agencies and visa servicing companies to arrange for your travel to our conferences and arrange for on-site visits. We may also share your personal information with member database companies to manage your membership, send newsletters and messages, support email and messaging services and analyze information.
Where required by law: we may share your personal information with law enforcement agencies, courts, other government authorities or other third parties where we believe necessary to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation, or otherwise to protect our rights or the rights of any third party.
In the context of a transaction: we may share your personal information with potential transaction partners, service providers, advisors and other third parties in connection with the consideration, negotiation, or completion of a corporate transaction in which we are acquired by or merged with another company or we sell or transfer all or a portion of our assets or business. Should such a sale or transfer occur, we will use reasonable efforts to obligate the entity to which we transfer your personal information to use it in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Notice.

Your Rights Over Your Personal Information

You have certain rights regarding the personal information we hold about you, subject to local law. These may include the rights to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to our use of, or receive a portable copy in a usable electronic format of your personal information. You also may have a right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection or privacy regulator.

We encourage you to contact us at the contact information set forth below to update or correct your information if it changes or if the personal information we hold about you is inaccurate. Where you have provided your consent to any use of your personal information, you can withdraw this consent at any time.

Please note we may require additional information from you to honor your requests.

If you would like to discuss or exercise any rights you may have under law, please contact us at the contact information set forth below.

Information Security And Storage

We implement physical, technical and organizational security measures designed to safeguard the personal information we process through the services. These measures are aimed at providing on-going integrity and confidentiality for your personal information. We evaluate and update these measures on a regular basis. However, no information system can be 100% secure, so we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your information.

We retain your personal information for as long as we have a relationship with you. When deciding how long to keep your personal information after our relationship with you has ended, we take into account our legal obligations. We maintain records of membership for recordkeeping purposes, taking into account our joint interest in future engagements. We may also retain records to investigate or defend against potential legal claims.

Third Party Links

Our site includes links to other websites whose privacy practices may differ from our practices. If you submit personal information to any of those sites, your information is governed by their privacy policies. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of any third-party sites linked from our website or other digital services. We encourage you to carefully read the privacy statement of any website you visit.

Our website includes Social Media Features, such as the Facebook button and other Widgets that run on our website (the “Features”). These Features may collect your Internet protocol address, which page you are visiting on our website, and may set a cookie to enable the Feature to function properly. Social Media Features and Widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our website. Your interactions with these Features are governed by the privacy statement of the company providing it.

International Data Transfer

Your personal information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in a country that is not regarded as providing the same level of protection for personal information as the laws of your home country, and may be available to the government of those countries under a lawful order made in those countries.

We have put in place appropriate safeguards (such as contractual commitments) in accordance with applicable legal requirements to provide adequate protections for your personal information. For more information on the appropriate safeguards in place and to obtain a copy of such safeguards, please contact us at the contact information set forth below.

Contact Us

U.S. Grains Council is the controller responsible for the personal information we collect and process.

If you have questions or concerns regarding the way in which your personal information has been used, please contact us at privacy@grains.org.

We are committed to working with you to obtain a fair resolution of any complaint or concern about privacy. If, however, you believe we have not been able to assist with your complaint or concern, you may have the right to make a complaint to the data protection authority of your country of residence.

Changes To The Policy

We may modify or update this privacy notice from time to time. If we make any revisions that materially change the ways in which we process your personal information, we will notify you of these changes before applying them to that personal information.