Silver Spring, MD—Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., who has served as commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) since 2009, will resign from the agency in March. FDA’s chief scientist Stephen Ostroff will serve as acting commissioner after this time until the position is filled.

In an e-mail to staff, Hamburg said the decision was not easy, CNN reported, and that her position at FDA has been the most rewarding of her career.

Hamburg wrote in her FDA blog on February 4 (the day before her resignation) that FDA had several big accomplishments in 2014 including making the most novel drug and biologics approvals in almost 20 years, working to address the abuse of opioid drugs, enforcingthe ban to sell tobacco products to children, confronting antibiotic resistance, improving food safety, proposing changes to the Nutrition Facts labels, dealing with the ebola outbreak and more.

Published in WholeFoods Magazine, March 2015 (online 2/5/15)