Three UF officials are serving on a 12-person federal committee charged with assessing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's role in ensuring safe food.
"The fact that there are three committee members from UF is really just a coincidence," Gui Liu, the committee's senior program assistant, wrote in an e-mail. "But, three is the greatest number of officials from one institution."
The committee, which met for the first time last Thursday in Washington, D.C., plans to submit a two-year report examining the gaps in the FDA's measures for farm-to-table food safety and public health protection, according to The National Academies' Web site.
Douglas Archer, associate dean for research at UF's food science and human nutrition department, was chosen along with UF's Emerging Pathogens Institute Director J. Glenn Morris Jr. and Martha Roberts, special assistant to the dean for research at UF's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
Archer, who has been involved with the FDA for about 20 years, said in an e-mail that he and his fellow UF committee members have extensive past experience with food safety research and policy making.
While the committee's first meeting coincides with the nationwide salmonella scare and resulting peanut butter recall, Liu said the committee isn't tasked with looking into any specific food safety recalls.
