Ms. Margaret Burns Rath
Margaret Burns-Rath was named assistant administrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service’s (FSIS) Office of International Coordination (OIC) in October 2024. She has served as acting international executive since January 2024. Prior to her appointment, she was the FSIS OIC deputy assistant administrator since August 2021.
In her role, Burns-Rath oversees FSIS’ international activities related to the agency’s public health and food safety mission. Her office coordinates international activities among FSIS’ Office of Field Operations; Office of Public Health Science; Office of Investigation, Enforcement and Audit; and Office of Policy and Program Development. She represents FSIS in contacts with foreign governments on technical issues pertaining to the import and export of meat, poultry and egg products to facilitate the safe international trade of these products. Her functions directly support FSIS’ Strategic Goals – 1: Prevent Foodborne Illness and Protect Public Health, 2: Transform Inspection Strategies, Policies, and Scientific Approaches to Improve Public Health and 3: Achieve Operational Excellence.
Burns-Rath began her USDA career in 2000 as a regulatory attorney with the USDA Office of the General Counsel’s Marketing, Regulatory and Food Safety Programs Division. For almost 15 years, she represented FSIS in both regulatory administrative proceedings and Federal District Court litigation. She provided legal counsel on legislation and regulatory analysis on all FSIS food safety laws. An expert in international law, Burns-Rath provided legal counsel and represented FSIS on international agreements, including the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations development. Burns-Rath also represented the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in all regulatory legal proceedings and provided extensive legal counsel, including representing the agency in negotiations and facilitating the finalization of international and domestic agreements.
Prior to working for FSIS, Burns-Rath served the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Food and Drug Administration as a regulatory counsel. She resolved a broad range of complex regulatory, scientific and technical issues concerning the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Burns-Rath also drafted policy and legislation for the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service. Before joining USDA, Burns-Rath was a practicing attorney in international trade law in Washington, D.C. Her expertise included antidumping duty and countervailing duty case filings, North American Free Trade Agreement arbitration and panel investigations and World Trade Organization interpretation. She served one year as a judicial law clerk for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia for the Honorable Chief Judge Claude M. Hilton.
Burns-Rath holds a Juris Doctor Summa Cum Laude from American University’s Washington College of Law, a Master of Public Health with Delta Omega honors from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a Bachelors of Arts Cum Laude in sociology and psychology from Boston University.