Ken Jaffe
Board Member
Ken Jaffe, MD, has 35 years experience working at the intersection of public health and sustainable agriculture. Jaffe operated a family medical practice for 25 years and attended public health school at Columbia University. He developed a grass fed beef farm in upstate New York, and a company that provides a marketing channel for 23 grass fed producers to wholesale buyers.
Ensuring children have access to healthy local meats, Jaffe created the first program offering NYS raised and processed beef to K-12 schools in 26 school districts from Buffalo to Long Island from 2013-2018. He exited that business in 2018 to focus on policy issues around livestock production and human health. Jaffe sits on the NYS Department of Agriculture and Markets Farm-to-School Coordinating Committee supporting strategic planning and is a member of the NY Grown Food for NY Kids Coalition organized by the American Farmland Trust. He is a “Clinical Champion” of Health Care Without Harm. He has lectured on antibiotics, livestock and human health at Cornell’s School of Veterinary Medicine and Public Health Program, and at the NY Academy of Medicine.
Jaffe is a Board member of the Center of Agricultural Development and Entrepreneurship (CADE) since 2010. In his Board capacity, he is leading the way for NYS to reduce on-farm antibiotic use in partnership with farmers and veterinarians. Enhanced antibiotic stewardship will help prevent the emergence of so-called “super bugs”--bacteria that are antibiotic resistant, posing a public health crisis for both humans and animals.
Jaffe is also on the Advisory Board of the Northeast Beef Supply Chain Study with Tufts and Cornell and authored Cornell’s “Green Grass, Green Jobs” report on the economic potential of underutilized NY grasslands.
Jaffe earned his medical degree from University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine.
