Mass Layoffs Start at Government Agencies Responsible for Food Safety

Thousands of people lost their jobs this week as massive layoffs began in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

The layoffs follow the announcement by The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last week that it is cutting 10,000 full-time employees across health agencies. In the announcement, the HHS said it will downsize from 82,000 to 62,000 employees. In addition, the Department will shrink from 28 divisions to 15, including the new Administration for a Healthy America. 

The staffing cuts include 3,500 full-time employees at the FDA, 2,400 at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1,200 at the National Institutes of Health, and 300 at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

In the announcement last week, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said “this department will do  more - a lot more - at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”

“The FDA as we know it is finished” 

In a LinkedIn post last week, Former FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said, “the FDA as we've known it is finished, with most of the leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety no longer employed. I believe that history will see this as a huge mistake.”

Califf added that “it will be interesting to hear from the new leadership how they plan to put "Humpty Dumpty" back together again.”

Califf told CNN Tuesday that “If we let down our guard and don’t do a good job reviewing, we’re going to unleash some things that are really dangerous into the population. Unless there’s some super plan, there’s going to be an effect on safety, because it takes whole teams of people to monitor the safety of products, and the timetables for product review will probably be delayed.”

The layoffs also include more than 100 employees from the FDA’s Human Foods Program. In addition, the firings include 130 people who worked in the FDA’s veterinary center, which is overseeing the FDA’s bird flu response. The center also oversees medicines and food given to pets and cattle. 

The FDA’s chief physician, Dr. Hilary Marston was also fired Tuesday.  

CNN quoted one FDA employee who called the firings “a bloodbath.” 

Layoffs follow resignations 

In mid-February, then FDA deputy commissioner for human food Jim Jones, resigned to protest the Trump administration’s layoffs at the agency.

Jones called the layoffs "indiscriminate" and that they included employees with “highly technical expertise in nutrition, infant formula, and food safety response.” 

That same week, a coalition of consumer, industry, and public health stakeholders published a letter in which they said that “adequate resources are critical not only for outbreak response but also for developing and updating food safety standards, providing science-based industry guidance, and ensuring a well-trained federal-state inspection force to protect the integrity of our food system.”

A few weeks before Jones resigned, the Trump administration fired United States Department of Agriculture Inspector General Phyllis K. Fong, J.D. Fong was responsible for audits, investigations, and evaluations for USDA programs.

The layoffs follow a decision made last month by the Trump administration to eliminate two safety advisory committees in the U.S. The Department of Agriculture.

The committees include the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMF) and the National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection (NACMI).

In a statement, Brian Ronholm, Director of Food Policy at Consumer Reports, said “the termination of these two important advisory committees is very alarming and should serve as a warning to consumers that food safety will not be a priority at USDA in the foreseeable future.”