Food Safety Matters

Ep. 72. David Acheson: The Trouble with Defining “Ready-to-Eat”

Dr. David Acheson, is the founder and CEO of The Acheson Group and brings more than 30 years of medical and food safety research and experience to provide strategic advice as well as recall and crisis management support to food companies and ancillary technology companies on a global basis on all matters relating to food safety and food defense.

David graduated from the University of London Medical School and practiced internal medicine and infectious diseases in the United Kingdom until 1987 when he moved to the New England Medical Center and became an Associate Professor at Tufts University in Boston, studying the molecular pathogenesis of foodborne pathogens.

Prior to forming The Acheson Group, David served as the Chief Medical Officer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service and then joined the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as the Chief Medical Officer at the FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). After serving as the director of CFSAN’s Office of Food Defense, Communication, and Emergency Response, David was appointed as the Assistant and then Associate Commissioner for Foods, which provided him an agency-wide leadership role for all food and feed issues and the responsibility for the development of the 2007 Food Protection Plan, which served as the basis for many of the authorities granted to FDA by the Food Safety Modernization Act.

From 2009 to 2013, he was a partner at Leavitt Partners where he managed Leavitt Partners Global Food Safety Solutions.

David has published extensively and is internationally recognized both for his public health expertise in food safety and his research in infectious diseases. He is a sought-after speaker and regular guest on national news programs. He serves on a variety of boards and food safety advisory groups of several major food manufacturers.

David was previously a guest on Food Safety Matters – episodes 12 and 45.

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In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we speak to David [11:31] about:

Classifying RTE foods and how consumer behavior plays a critical role
Challenges related to messaging and marketing tactics displayed on consumer packaging and how it can interfere with food safety perception
Consumer vs. manufacturer responsibility when foodborne illness occurs
How food processing trends, consumer behaviors, and regulations intertwine
Steps a company can take to determine if their product is truly RTE
Why consistently negative swabbing results is not a good thing
How FDA responds to positive contamination findings in a plant
The challenges associated with drilling down traceability to the item level
Romaine lettuce and why leafy greens are such a tricky commodity
Salmonella and the likelihood that it may officially become an adulterant