Report: Staffing Cuts Leave Public in the Dark on FDA Food Safety Warnings  

More than a dozen FDA food safety warning letters were not published recently due to staffing cuts, NBC News reported this month. 

Quoting anonymous current and former FDA staff members, NBC reported that “the public doesn’t know about any of this, after the federal workers responsible for reviewing the food safety letters before they’re posted online were fired.”

The report states that the review process for the warning letters ground to a halt after the Trump Administration launched a wave of layoffs in early April, firing thousands of federal health workers at agencies like the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Health and Human Services.  

The sources told NBC News that since the layoffs began, more than a dozen food safety warning letters have not been published for public consumption. 

The report included a response from the FDA that stated that the agency “remains fully committed to transparency, accountability, and the protection of public health.”

In April, a law firm sued a California farm for two children and an adult who all suffered acute kidney failure from an E. coli infection. The lawsuit says they contracted the infection from Romaine lettuce produced by Taylor Farms, and that the FDA did not inform the public about the outbreak. 

The lawsuit says the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the FDA failed to inform the public of the risk.

The company has denied that it was the source of the outbreak. 

In an April article titled “A deadly E. coli outbreak hit 15 states, but the FDA chose not to publicize it,” NBC News reported that an internal FDA report stated, “there were no public communications related to this outbreak.”

In the article, an FDA spokesperson is quoted as saying that “by the time investigators had confirmed the likely source, the outbreak had already ended, and there was no actionable advice for consumers.”

Also last week, a group of 20 officials from USDA staff unions sent a letter to the U.S. Senate and House appropriations committees that oversee the agency to warn of the food safety ramifications from recent staffing cuts. 

"The combination of harmful budget cuts, executive overreach, and politically motivated staffing changes have weakened key agencies. Without Congressional oversight, the decades of knowledge and infrastructure that ensure food safety and security will be dismantled," the letter stated.

In the article, a USDA spokeswoman said that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins “will not compromise the critical work of the department,” and that some food inspection and firefighting positions have been made exempt from the federal hiring freeze.

In March, an alert from the United States Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) stated that more people in the U.S. were sickened from food contamination outbreaks in 2024 than in 2023, and the number of people who died or were hospitalized doubled.