Elanor Starmer, a senior adviser to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, was named acting administrator of the Agricultural Marketing Service following the departure of agency chief Anne Alonzo, said a USDA spokesman. Some 4,000 people work at AMS, which enforces grading standards, provides daily reports of market prices for hundreds of commodities, oversees the National Organic Program and 20 produced-financed “check off” programs, and buys food for pubic nutrition programs. The Hagstrom Report said Starmer was expected to get the AMS job permanently.
“Starmer has coordinated the department’s work on local and regional food systems through the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative,” said a USDA spokesman, who added that Starmer was the USDA’s liaison to the FDA on the Food Safety Modernization Act, which requires food producers and processors to develop plans to prevent food contamination, and handled issues including specialty crops and value-added agriculture. She began work at USDA in 2011.