Source: Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE, 11/15/13

Dr. Elisabeth Hagen has resigned her position as Under Secretary for Food Safety at the Food Safety and Inspection Service of FSIS, the agency has announced.

"Today I am announcing that I will be embarking in mid-December on a new challenge in the private sector," Dr. Hagen said in a statement send to the media late morning. "I am grateful to Secretary Vilsack for the opportunity to serve as Under Secretary for Food Safety and be part of his leadership team. I also want to thank the dedicated public servants of FSIS for their tireless work in protecting the public health; it has been an honor to serve with them. I've had the pleasure of serving FSIS in a career capacity as well as Under Secretary, so I know full well their commitment to protecting public health.

"It has been an ambitious three years. USDA and FSIS have successfully made preventing foodborne illness a real priority. The steps we have taken, from modernizing the agency, strengthening oversight of industry and increasing outreach to consumers has led to safer food and fewer foodborne illnesses," she said.

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said, "Thanks to Elisabeth Hagen's hard work and sound leadership of the thousands of employees at the Food Safety and Inspection Service, America's food supply is safer today than ever before. FSIS has taken a wide range of new and innovative steps to protect consumers — from adopting a new zero-tolerance policy for additional strains of E. coli in beef, to adopting new standards to protect Americans from Salmonella and Campylobacter in poultry, and much more. I'm proud of our record under the Obama Administration to ensure a safe food supply for Americans, and Under Secretary Hagen has played a key role in those efforts. I wish her all the best in her future endeavors."

Dr. Hagen was named to the position in January 2010. Her initial priorities included tackling non-O157 STECs and HACCP validation guidelines, she said in an early interview she did with Meatingplace. Some of those priorities remain on the list for the agency, although others have been largely accomplished. FSIS's priorities for 2014 are to make headway on prevention of salmonella and expand the implementation of the controversial HACCP-based Inspection Models Project (HIMP) for poultry.

The latter has been the target of significant criticism, although Dr. Hagen champions it as a step forward in the effectiveness of the government's food safety efforts.

"She will be missed," Barry Carpenter, CEO of the North American Meat Association and a USDA veteran, told Meatingplace. "She has been a strong advocate for the continuous improvement of food safety while understanding the realities of meat and poutry production. Her leadership and openness to all stakeholders has been key to her effectiveness [and] her efforts to modernize poultry inspection are a testament to her commitment to food safety."

Mike Brown, president of the National Chicken Council, said in a statement, "The chicken industry appreciates all of the hard work and dedication by Dr. Hagen in improving food safety and public health. She has been a true advocate for science-based regulatory policy and we praise all of her work towards modernizing the poultry inspection system. She has always been willing and open to engage in discussions with NCC and members of the chicken industry and we will wish her continued success wherever her path may lead."

As well, J. Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute, said in a statement, “We thank Dr. Hagen for her commitment to ensuring the safety of the U.S. meat and poultry supply. During her tenure as Under Secretary, we have appreciated the open dialogue she has maintained with us about critical issues and while we haven’t always agreed on policies, we’ve shared a common goal: to maintain the United States’ role as producer of the safest meat and poultry supply in the world. We wish her the best in her new role.”

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