Joe Reardon
Assistant Commissioner Joe Reardon recently received the presidential award from the Association of Public Health Laboratories at the 2015 APHL Annual Meeting & Ninth Government Environmental Laboratory Conference in Indianapolis. The award is selected by the APHL president and given to individuals who have made significant contributions to the association’s work to promote policies that strengthen public health laboratories.
“Joe always made it a priority to make sure that laboratories were at the table where food safety program optimization was concerned and really help elevate the participation of laboratories in many important conversations and decisions – a legacy that still stands,” said then-president Dan Rice about why he nominated Reardon. “One accomplishment that I would really like to recognize Joe for is the FDA funded ISO 17025 cooperative agreement program, which is funding 30 state laboratories to get accredited to the ISO 17025 standard, or to expand scope of accreditation. This program would not be here today without Joe’s vision and tireless efforts to advocate for the labs and to promote the value and importance of regulatory labs getting accredited to this standard.”
Reardon was director of the NCDA&CS Food and Drug Protection Division until he went to Washington, D.C., in 2009 to work for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He returned to the department in 2013 to serve as assistant commissioner over consumer protection programs.