Another prominent food safety consumer advocate is moving to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. At the end of July, Chris Waldrop will leave his position as director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) to start working at the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition’s (CFSAN) Office of Analytics and Outreach. At FDA, he’ll help coordinate research and policy and advise senior leadership on information from consumer research studies. Waldrop, who has been with CFA for 12 years, said he is happy to have worked with a “bunch of other smart and talented people” to get the Food Safety Modernization Act passed and to convince the Department of Agriculture to declare six additional strains of E. coli as adulterants and put in place new performance standards for poultry parts.

For 11 years, he also spearheaded organization of the National Food Policy Conference. “I hope that’s been a useful conference for the larger food policy community to be able to move some of these conversations forward and provide a platform for some of the tough discussions,” Waldrop said. In preparing to start his new position at FDA, Waldrop said he’s looking forward to the “new challenges and new opportunities there.” Last month, former director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Caroline Smith DeWaal, joined CFSAN as international food safety policy manager.

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