You spent years as a lawyer defending an infant-formula maker against claims that it failed to warn. Now you hold the pen at the FDA. I am writing to ask you, one formula lawyer to another, to require the testing and inspection that would actually meet the standard of care — across the whole chain
The phrase “Never let a serious crisis go to waste” is usually attributed to Rahm Emanuel and usually said with a wink — a crisis grabs the public’s attention and opens room for things that, in calmer times, never make it out of committee. I am going to say it without the wink.
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A father named Chris George spent the better part of a year trying to answer a question that should not have been hard to answer: that grew and processed the lettuce that nearly killed his son?
Colton George, now ten, was nine years old when he ate romaine contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 in the
Why the food industry should embrace whole genome sequencing (WGS) — even when it’s inconvenient
I few weeks ago I was supposed to give a talk about the pros and cons of WGS and the food industry. I never made it to the talk because my day job got in the way.
When I started suing
I have spent time sitting across kitchen tables from people whose lives were upended by a single meal. Some of those conversations stay with me.
The ones about raw milk and Guillain-Barré syndrome are near the top of that list, because they involve a complication most people have never heard of, caused by a bacterium
The people who find foodborne outbreaks are being fired, defunded, and disbanded — and the bugs do not care.
For more than thirty years I have represented the families on the other end of a foodborne outbreak — the parents of children on dialysis with hemolytic uremic syndrome, the survivors of a contaminated hamburger or
For over thirty years, I have been beating the same drum, and the last few days were no exception (some argue a bit too loudly and self-serving).
I have been posting about public health officials — and the FDA — sending out outbreak documents with the names of companies, growers, processors, and retailers blacked out
Dr. Donald A. Prater, D.V.M., is the Acting Deputy Commissioner for Food. As the Acting Deputy Commissioner for Food, Dr. Prater leads the agency’s Human Foods Program, overseeing all FDA nutrition and food safety activities. In this role, Dr. Prater exercises authority over all Human Food Program entities and operations, including resource allocation, risk-prioritization strategy
I asked our AI friends – What are the pros and cons of replacing FDA Commissioner Makary with me – here is the response?
This is a very timely question — Makary resigned as FDA Commissioner today, May 12, 2026, amid reports of internal tensions and policy clashes, with the vaping dispute reportedly being a
