Eskin most recently served as the USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety from March 2021- January 2025. In this role, Eskin worked with the Under Secretary to lead the Office of Food Safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, overseeing the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), which has regulatory oversight for ensuring that meat, poultry and egg products are safe, wholesome and accurately labeled. At USDA, she helped develop and implement the Salmonella in Poultry initiative and championed a research project to update the Safe Handling Instructions label.
Prior to joining USDA, Eskin was the Director of the Safe Food Project at The Pew Charitable Trusts in from November 2009 – March 2021. While at Pew, she managed a broad multi-stakeholder coalition that was instrumental in the enactment of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). She also served as the Deputy Director of the Produce Safety Project (PSP), a Pew-funded initiative at Georgetown University from 2008-2009, where she worked with the Association of Food and Drug Officials to draft the organization’s Model Produce Safety Code. When she was at the PSP, she was a senior scholar with the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.
Eskin spent nearly 20 years as a public-policy consultant to numerous consumer advocacy and public-interest organizations, providing strategic and policy advice on a broad range of consumer-protection issues, in particular food and drug safety, labeling, and advertising. She has served as a member of multiple federal advisory committees related to consumer information on prescription drugs, meat and poultry safety, and foodborne illness surveillance. During her career, she has written numerous reports and articles on food-safety topics.
Eskin has been engaged with STOP at multiple times during her career: as primary author of its 10th anniversary report; as a partner in the efforts to enact FSMA; and as a member of its Board of Directors.
Eskin received her J.D. from UC Law-San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings College of the Law) and her B.A. from Brown University.
