Dr. David Acheson, CEO and President of The Acheson Group

Dr. David Acheson has traveled his way around the food safety globe. He’s worked as an internal medicine physician, spent time in research labs and performed regulatory work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Now, as CEO and president of The Acheson Group, he runs a consulting firm that supports food companies up and down the supply chain, managing food safety risks, prevention and crisis management.

Acheson focused heavily on E. coli during the major outbreaks of the 1990s. He moved from his native England to Boston to work as an associate professor in the Tufts University research lab to better understand how bacteria make people sick. His research attempted to answer questions such as how a person’s body breaks down E. coli, and why it leads to kidney failure or death. “What are the molecular mechanisms behind that?” he said.

He was recruited by the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service to advise on the 1992-1993 Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak, where he worked his way to chief medical officer, managing the regulatory and scientific aspects of meat, poultry and egg products. He went on to hold various roles at the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, including chief medical officer and later associate commissioner for foods, from 2007 to 2009.

Acheson’s food safety journey has come full circle, as he now provides education and resources to food companies “trying to keep out of trouble,” he said.

“It’s great to make people feel like you’ve done something to be appreciated,” Acheson said. “You take all of that background, experience and strategic thinking and apply it to the real world to help navigate problems.”

Acheson shared how running his consulting firm for the last 13 years has led to more productive public health outcomes for food companies around the world.

What I figured out is despite being a clinician, basic scientist and regulator at a senior level, I think I do a lot better to protect the public doing what I do today, working with food companies who are trying to do the right thing. In terms of protection, we actually accomplish a whole lot more in this role working in the private sector than I ever did as a regulator.

No two problems are the same, and understanding it really boils down to risk management. In the food world, you’ve got public health risks: Am I going to make somebody sick? Foodborne-related illnesses run the gamut, from minor through deadly. The key part of managing risk today is reputation. When you think about reputation, there’s a bunch of stakeholders that matter.

It’s an incredibly emotional roller coaster for people when this comes out of left field, and a lot of what I do is work with them to help navigate that fear. If you do it right, you’re at least going to come out at the end of it feeling that you’ve done the right thing.

I like to run the business as an extended family. First and foremost, having people work in the company who want to work. Making people feel like they’re part of a larger successful organization. Life can throw you curveballs, and stuff happens. If somebody’s sick, you’ve got a sick kid or you’ve got a sick pet, then that’s the priority.

A big part of our success is speed. We typically call clients back within 15 minutes of them calling. There’s rapid outreach, and we get the right people involved quickly.

Quality and safety to me are different. How can you have something that’s unsafe, but good quality? The answer is you probably can’t. You can’t have something that’s got Salmonella in it and say the quality is perfect. Sometimes, quality is entirely a reputational issue, to go back to the risk. If the quality is off, you’re not going to have a regulatory effect, and you’re not going to have a public health impact, but you’ll have a reputational impact.

There are certain things that will never go away. People don’t want to pay huge amounts for food, so I think we’re just going to get more creative. Whichever way you put it, whether it’s made in a lab or grown on the prairie, there is always going to be a challenge.