When it comes to food safety, Michael Taylor, former deputy commissioner for food for FDA and present co-chair of the Stop Foodborne Illness Board, has seen it all (or most of it) from having served both publicly and privately. Taylor, a frequent presenter at Food Safety Summit, suggested that in spite of all the technology, collaboration and education to improve food safety, crisis management still drives changes.
His FSS keynote summarized the past 25 years of food safety that he witnessed as a regulator, and its present and future state now that he’s committed outside the government to food safety in the public interest. Generally speaking, despite a checkered past and a spotty present with recalls (e.g., the recent romaine recall), food safety is evolving toward a higher plane—provided some kinks can be worked out in the field, literally speaking.