The Al Almanza decade as USDA’s most important figure in food safety is ending, and Stephen Censky is coming in as deputy secretary to help Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue run the department.
Almanza, deputy under secretary for food safety and administrator of USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), is retiring from government effective July 31. Censky is stepping down as chief executive of the American Soybean Association to take the post at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Almanza’s actual departure will come on a day he chooses, while Censky must go through the Senate confirmation process. There are about 1,200 positions in the federal government that require Senate confirmation. Thirteen of those are USDA jobs, including the deputy secretary and the secretary of agriculture.