A Colorado veterinarian originally from Iraq has become the only American invited to advise Europeans on food safety.
Dr. Mo Salman, a veterinary epidemiologist at Colorado State University, has been named to a three-year term with the European Food Safety Authority.
The EFSA provides scientific data and advice to the European Commission on food safety issues. The European Commission oversees spending and implements policy for the European Union’s 25 member countries.
Salman said the EFSA is similar to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, although the European body “has broader authority” and concerns itself with broader issues.
He said the European authority members “don’t look at me as a North American citizen, they look at me as a scientist who can contribute” a specific area of expertise.
Salman said he has been working with the authority for several years – and consequently has an idea of the exhausting commute that lies ahead.
“I’m now working primarily on issues related to (mad cow disease),” said Salman, whose 22 years at CSU have included serving as director of the Animal Health Population Institute.
In fact, Salmon said, he just returned from a trip to Armenia, where he was researching bovine spongiform encephalopathy – better known as mad cow disease – a progressive, degenerative, fatal disease affecting the central nervous system.
The disease became a problem in Great Britain in the late 1980s and since has infected more than 180,000 animals there and led to the death of more than 140 people, according to the World Health Organization.
As a result, Europe barred animal parts from cattle feed because scientists suspect that tissue, such as the brain and spinal parts, from infected animals, can transmit the disease.
Salman, who grew up in Baghdad, Iraq, studied veterinary medicine in England and practiced for a while in Lebanon before coming to the U.S. 25 years ago.
It was in Lebanon, he said, that his interest in animal epidemiology began. “After a while, I started to think that we need to think more about preventive measures,” he said.
