Elisabeth Hagen
Agriculture Undersecretary for Food Safety Elisabeth Hagen announced today that she will leave her position in mid December.

Hagen, a physician, did not announce future plans but said she will embarking “on a new challenge in the private sector.”

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack praised her work but did not announce who would succeed her on an interim basis. The position of undersecretary for food safety requires a presidential nomination and Senate confirmation.

“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,” Vilsack said.

“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.”

Bill Marler, a Seattle-based food safety lawyer who is often a severe critic of FSIS, told The Hagstrom Report, “Dr. Hagen will be sorely missed. She was smart, had a great sense of humor, tolerated me for the most part, and always knew that her job was one deeply rooted in the health of the consumers of the products she regulated. She was one of the very best who has ever held that position.”