Dr. Stephen F. Sundlof , director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has accepted a two-year assignment with the Center for Public and Corporate Veterinary Medicine, part of the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, to expand its programs related to food safety and security.

Under an agreement between the FDA and the Center for Public and Corporate Veterinary Medicine, Sundlof will work to enhance the public and corporate veterinary medicine curriculum for veterinary students with a focus on food safety and security, and to develop career transition training for veterinarians interested in public service.

He will develop a new training and development program in regulatory science designed for government employees, which will be done in partnership with the University of Minnesota and the Ohio State University. The expectation of this collaborative effort is to provide a continuum of training in public practice from the veterinary school level through the mid-career level.

“We are thrilled that Dr. Sundlof has agreed to work with us as we expand the activities of the center,” said Dr. Valerie Ragan, director of the Center for Public and Corporate Veterinary Medicine. “He is a nationally recognized leader in food safety and we greatly appreciate the FDA’s support of our efforts by agreeing to this assignment.”

Sundlof has served as director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition for the past two years, and spent the previous 14 years as director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine which regulates the manufacture and distribution of food additives and drugs that will be given to animals. He began his career in 1980 on the faculty of the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

Sundlof has published numerous articles in scientific journals on drug residues and food safety. From 1994 to 2008, he served as chairman of the World Health Organization/Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Codex Alimentarius Committee on Residues of Veterinary Drugs in Foods. He is past president of the American Academy of Veterinary Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

The Center for Public and Corporate Veterinary Medicine, located on the University of Maryland College Park campus, trains veterinary students from North American veterinary colleges for careers in public practice. The center is administered through a partnership of Virginia Tech and the University of Maryland.

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