| Tom Vilsack (finally!) appointed Jerold R. Mande as Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety. Only about 6 months after Obama took office. Of course, Mande is just the Deputy. So who's the Under Secretary? No word on that yet.
What I can say is that Mande looks pretty good. That is, his credentials are good and all of my preliminary digging around has not found any indications of previous employment as a lobbyist. Mande has a Masters in Public Health from UNC Chapel Hill with a focus on Nutrition and Epidemiology. He began his career as a staffer to Congress, working on food safety legislation. He's worked at the FDA (he designed the Nutrition Facts food label), and he's worked at the Dept of Labor as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Occupational Health. He's also worked at the White House as a policy advisor on food safety, tobacco, and cancer. His most recent job was at Yale's School of Medicine, at their Cancer Center. There, he "developed a national model to increase support for cancer prevention and control, including diet, exercise, and obesity." He also began and managed a program to improve cancer care for underserved populations.
So far as I can tell, this is ALL GOOD. |
