Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said Carmen Rottenberg will lead USDA’s meat inspection agency, Richard Fordyce will head the Farm Service Agency, and Bruce Summers is the new chief of the Agricultural Marketing Service. Since last August, Rottenberg has been acting deputy undersecretary for food safety and will continue in that post as well as heading the Food Safety and Inspection Service until the Senate confirms a Trump appointee as undersecretary, said the USDA.
The White House said in early May that it will nominate Texas Tech professor Mindy Brashears for the undersecretary’s post. The appointment of Rottenberg as FSIS administrator, and of Paul Kiecker as FSIS deputy administrator, may be a sign of confidence in the nomination. Perdue has said he would not appoint agency chiefs before the senior executive overseeing them, the undersecretary, was named and allowed to sound out the subordinates as working partners.
Also on Friday, the USDA announced Fordyce, the FSA state director in Missouri, as FSA administrator, and Summers, a 30-year AMS employee, as the agency’s administrator. He had been its acting administrator.
In addition, Agri-Pulse said Ray Starling, the White House agriculture adviser since President Trump took office, will become Perdue’s chief of staff from June 1, succeeding Heidi Green.