February 17/Battle Creek, Mich./Business Wire -- The International Food Protection Training Institute (IFPTI) announced the appointment to its board of directors of Dr. David William Kennedy Acheson, managing director, Food and Import Safety, Leavitt Partners, a firm founded by former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary and EPA administrator Michael O. Leavitt to provide strategic input and counsel to clients in matters involving health, the environment and trade. Prior to joining Leavitt Partners, Acheson served as associate commissioner of foods of the FDA, a role in which he provided agency-wide leadership on all food and feed issues, including health promotion and nutrition.

"IFPTI is dedicated to improving public health through the creation of a fully integrated national food safety system," said Stephen Benoit, president and chief operating officer of the National Center for Food Protection and a founding Board member of IFPTI. "As such, we are extremely pleased to have Dr. Acheson as a member of the institute's board of directors given his long-standing recognition of the essential role state and local agencies play in assuring the safety of the nation's food supply, and the critical importance of training to assuring capacity, competency, and equivalency within state and local agencies as part of an integrated food safety system."

"Building an integrated system between federal, state and local agencies responsible for the safety of the nation's food supply relies heavily on training, and the International Food Protection Training Institute is meeting that need," said Acheson. "I look forward to continuing the mission of integration I was so passionate about during my tenure as associate commissioner of the FDA and to contributing to the advancement of food protection on a global basis."

Acheson graduated from the University of London Medical School, and after practicinginternal medicine and infectious diseases in the U.K., moved to the New England Medical Center and Tufts University in Boston in 1987. As an associate professor at Tufts University and later in his laboratory at the University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore, he undertook basic molecular pathogenesis research on foodborne pathogens, especially Shiga toxin-producing E. coli.

In 2002, Acheson became the chief medical officer at the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) and subsequently served as director of CFSAN's Office of Food Defense, Communication and Emergency Response. In 2007, Acheson was appointed as the assistant commissioner for Food Protection to provide advice and counsel to the FDA commissioner on strategic and substantive food safety and food defense matters.

From the March 1, 2010, Prepared Foods E-dition