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Reports Say FDA Has A New Chief

By PritzkerLaw

Press reports indicate that President Obama has chosen Margaret Hamburg, the fomer New York City health commissioner, to head the troubled Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

On the food side of the FDA, the nominee would inherit an agency that has been criticized repeatedly for failing to keep the food supply safe from deadly pathogens. Currently, the FDA is monitoring a Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak related to peanut butter and other peanut products that has killed nine and sickened more than 683 people in 46 states.

Fred Pritzker, founder and president of national food safety law firm PritzkerOlsen Attorneys, has been among the critics who have said the food regulation at the FDA and other federal agencies needs to be restructured. PritzkerOlsen represent the families of three of the nine people who died in the Peanut Corporation of America Salmonella outbreak.

Neither the White House nor Ms. Hamburg has confirmed the news reports, which first appeared in The Associated Press and The Washington Post.

The Post said Joshua Sharfstein, Baltimore's health commissioner, would be Ms. Hamburg's chief deputy.

Ms. Hamburg, 43, is a graduate of Radcliffe College and Harvard Medical School. One of her primary interests has been the study of bioterrorism.

Full post as published by Food Poisoning Law Blog on March 11, 2009 (boomark / email).