Obama taps new FDA head

President Obama spoke with Brazil's President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva in the White House yesterday. (Saul Loeb/ AFP/ Getty Images)

WASHINGTON - The nation's food safety system is a "hazard to public health" and overdue for an overhaul, President Obama said yesterday as he focused on that task by filling the top job at the Food and Drug Administration.

Obama used his weekly radio and video address to announce the nomination of former New York City health commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg, as agency commissioner, and selection of Baltimore's health commissioner, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein as her deputy. Consumer groups applauded the picks.

The president also is creating a special advisory group to coordinate food-safety laws and recommend how to update them. Many of these laws have not changed since they were written early in the last century, he said.

Obama said the food-safety system is too spread out, making it difficult to share information and solve problems.

The FDA does not have enough money or workers to conduct annual inspections at more than a fraction of the 150,000 food processing plants and warehouses in the country, Obama said.

"That is a hazard to public health. It is unacceptable. And it will change under the leadership of Dr. Margaret Hamburg," he pledged.

Hamburg, 53, is a bioterrorism specialist. She was an assistant health secretary under President Bill Clinton and helped lay the groundwork for the government's bioterrorism and flu pandemic preparations.

As New York City's top health official in the early 1990s, she created a program that cut high rates of drug-resistant tuberculosis. She is the daughter of two doctors. Her mother was the first black woman to earn a medical degree from Yale University, and she credits her father for instilling in her a passion for public health.

Sharfstein, 39, is a pediatrician who has challenged the FDA on the safety of over-the-counter cold medicines for children. He also served as a health policy aide to Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, who plays a leading role in overseeing the pharmaceutical industry.

Obama cited a string of breakdowns in assuring food safety in recent years, from contaminated spinach in 2006 to salmonella in peppers and possibly tomatoes last year. This year, a massive salmonella outbreak in peanut products has sickened more than 600 people, is suspected of causing nine deaths and led to one of the largest product recalls in US history.

Also yesterday, Obama and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil discussed the economy, energy, and the environment during their first White House meeting.

Both leaders said the Oval Office sit-down was productive and they looked forward to seeing each other at the Group of 20 nations meeting in London early next month, followed by the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad in mid-April.

"I have been a great admirer of Brazil and a great admirer of the progressive, forward-looking leadership that President Lula has shown throughout Latin America and throughout the world," Obama said after the meeting.

Brazil has become a major US trading partner, and its cautious economic policies have helped it weather the global financial crisis better than almost all other major economic powers. Brazil also has huge new sources of offshore oil and is the world's largest exporter of ethanol, which could give it an important role in helping the United States wean itself from Venezuelan crude and shift to cleaner sources of energy.

Brazil, however, has seen little progress on its demand that the United States lift a 53 cent-per-gallon import tariff on ethanol, a gasoline alternative. Its discoveries in the past two years of some 80 billion barrels of oil could help turn the country into a major crude exporter and put it in better position to bargain with the United States.

Obama said he has admired Silva's efforts to develop biofuels and wants to follow a similar path developing cleaner sources of energy for the United States. He acknowledged tensions between the two countries over ethanol, and suggested they can be resolved over time.