Washington Update

Donna V. Porter is a Specialist in Life Science at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress, where she has worked since 1980. She is responsible for answering questions and doing research for members of Congress and staff on food safety and nutrition research issues. Dr. Porter served as project director for the 1990 study by the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) Committee on the Nutrition Components of Food Labeling. The IOM issued the report Nutrition Labeling: Issues and Directions for the 1990s, for which Dr. Porter received the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Commissioner's Citation Award in 1991. Dr. Porter was also project director for the IOM's Committee on State Food Labeling, which issued the 1992 report Food Labeling: Toward National Uniformity, mandated by the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990. She is currently involved in the effort to reform the regulation of dietary supplements and has spent considerable time examining the regulation of dietary supplements in industrialized countries. Before joining the Library, Donna was a fellow at the National Nutrition Consortium in Washington and a Congressional Science Fellow assigned to the Science Policy Research Division of CRS. She holds a B.S. in food and nutrition from the State University of New York at Plattsburgh and a Ph.D. in human nutrition with a minor in political science from Ohio State University.