Dive Brief:
- FDA deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine Michael Taylor will leave his post on June 1.
- Dr. Stephen Ostroff will take his place as deputy commissioner. Ostroff oversaw the FDA as acting commissioner while the FDA awaited the recent confirmation of its new commissioner, Dr. Robert Califf.
- Taylor joined the FDA in 2009 and was appointed to deputy commissioner in 2010. In that time, he led the creation and implementation of FSMA, initiatives to eliminate certain antibiotics used for food animals, and nutrition-related initiatives to reduce the risk of chronic illness and other diet-related ailments.
Dive Insight:
Taylor has had a long career working in various capacities in the food industry. His affiliation with the FDA actually began long before 2009, as he took a position as an FDA staff attorney in the 1970s and later held the title of deputy commissioner for policy, among other positions. Taylor also served as administrator for the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service in the mid-1990s. He played a role in declaring an E. coli strain an adulterant, which had caused a massive outbreak in 1993, marking a drastic change in USDA meat inspection policy.
In between his stints at the FDA and USDA, Taylor had worked with Monsanto, first in an attorney-client relationship in his private practice and later as the company's VP of public policy. That link to Monsanto stirred controversy around his appointment as the FDA's first deputy commissioner by President Obama.
After performing many different roles in the food industry, why Taylor is leaving his leadership post and where he will end up next are unconfirmed. The news release announcing his departure states that he "plans to continue working on in the food safety arena, focusing on those settings where people lack regular access to sufficient, nutritious and safe food." But it doesn't clarify where or in what capacity he will be working within food safety.
