Dr. Susan Mayne, currently Director of the FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, will retire effective May 31st after tenure of eight years. Dr. Mayne received uncomplimentary comments in an extensive and penetrating review of food-related activities falling under her jurisdiction. At issue were reports of interpersonal friction, failure to communicate with other units within the FDA and questionable leadership. This was documented by award-winning investigative journalist Helena Bottmiller-Evich. To her credit, Dr. Mayne was involved in developing rules under the Food Safety Modernization Act, updating nutrition facts and aspects of labeling.
Prior to joining the FDA, Dr. Mayne spent thirty years at Yale University rising to Chairperson of the Chronic Diseases Epidemiology Department and Associate Director of the Yale Cancer Center. She has a distinguished academic record and is the author of numerous scientific papers. Success in academia does not automatically qualify an incumbent to be an administrator of a large, federal agency. The same may be said for the current FDA Commissioner who was recruited from Duke University for a short term under a previous Administration and was recently reappointed to lead the FDA.
A review conducted by the Reagan-Udall Foundation demonstrated profound deficiencies in the structure and function of food-related activities of the FDA. The ongoing sequence of failures by the Agency include predicting and preventing the infant formula crisis, ignoring contamination of juices with heavy metals, outbreaks of foodborne bacterial infections attributed to leafy greens and other public health problems.