CARTOON: FDA Suspends Food Safety Checks After Trump Staff Cuts
"The proposal would also eliminate a number of rural health programs at HHS, including grants and residency programs for rural hospitals and state offices."
Cartoons by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
The FDA in early April suspended an effort to improve its testing for bird flu in milk, cheese and pet food, as a result of staff cuts.
By Leah Douglas
Reuters (4/17/25)
WASHINGTON, April 17 (Reuters) - The Food and Drug Administration is suspending a quality control program for its food testing laboratories as a result of staff cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services, according to an internal email seen by Reuters.
The proficiency testing program of the FDA's Food Emergency Response Network is designed to ensure consistency and accuracy across the agency's network of about 170 labs that test food for pathogens and contaminants to prevent food-borne illness.
The firing and departure of as many as 20,000 HHS employees have upended public health research and disrupted the agency's work on areas like bird flu and drug reviews. President Donald Trump hopes to slash as much as $40 billion from HHS.
"Unfortunately, significant reductions in force, including a key quality assurance officer, an analytical chemist, and two microbiologists at FDA's Human Food Program Moffett Center have an immediate and significant impact on the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) Proficiency Testing (PT) Program," says the email sent on Tuesday from FERN's National Program Office and seen by Reuters.
The program will be suspended at least through September 30 and means the agency will be unable to do planned quality control work around lab testing for the parasite Cyclospora in spinach or the pesticide glyphosate in barley, among other tests, the email says.
"These PTs and Exercises are critical to demonstrating the competency and readiness of our laboratory network to detect and respond to food safety and food defense events," the email says.
HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Food safety laboratories rely on these types of tests to meet standards for accreditation, said a source familiar with the situation, who was not aware of other ready alternatives to the FDA to provide such testing.
The FDA in early April suspended an effort to improve its testing for bird flu in milk, cheese and pet food, as a result of staff cuts.
FDA Suspends Milk Quality Control Tests Amid Job Cuts — The Food and Drug Administration is suspending a quality control program for testing of fluid milk and other dairy products due to reduced capacity in its food safety and nutrition division, according to an internal email seen by Reuters. The suspension is another disruption to the nation’s food safety programs after the termination and departure of 20,000 employees of the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the FDA, as part of President Donald Trump’s effort to shrink the federal workforce. … Link to story
Trump Administration Plots Massive Budget Cuts That 'Would Destroy Public Health'
"Trump promised to fight for the working class, but instead he, Elon Musk, and RFK Jr. are attacking the programs and services that keep middle class, working class, and vulnerable families safe and healthy in order to pay for tax cuts for billionaires."
By Jake Johnson
Common Dreams (4/21/25)
The Trump administration is preparing a budget proposal that experts say would utterly devastate public health across the United States by eliminating life-saving initiatives and hampering key medical research, with massive cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.
Under the administration's proposal, which has not been finalized and must ultimately be approved by the Republican-controlled Congress, the CDC and NIH would each see their budgets cut by 40%. Overall, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would see its budget cut from $121 billion to roughly $80 billion under the Trump plan.
Ellie Murray, an independent epidemiologist, warned on social media that "a cut that big would destroy public health."
The administration is also pushing to consolidate departments and programs under the newly announced Administration for a Healthy America (AHA), an initiative spearheaded by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who is overseeing large-scale firings at his agency that critics say endanger the well-being of children and families across the U.S.
CNN noted that as part of a sweeping attack on public health agencies, the proposal "eliminates CDC's global health center and programs focused on chronic disease prevention, and domestic HIV/AIDS prevention."
"While some of the agency's work would be moved into new AHA centers, programs on gun violence, injury prevention, youth violence prevention, drowning, minority health, and others would be eliminated entirely," CNN continued. "The proposal would also eliminate a number of rural health programs at HHS, including grants and residency programs for rural hospitals and state offices."
Bloodbath
Thomas Farley, a pediatrician and public health researcher, called the proposal "a bloodbath" and highlighted what he called "stunning examples" of the kinds of initiatives in the administration's crosshairs, including the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion and "newborn screening programs for genetic diseases and hearing loss."
"Call your representative and send a copy of this proposed act of abject cruelty to them," Farley urged.
Members of the Democratic caucus in Congress immediately vowed to fight the proposed budget cuts, which come as the administration is gutting health agency staff and working with Republicans to slash Medicaid.
"President Trump promised to fight for the working class, but instead he, Elon Musk, and RFK Jr. are attacking the programs and services that keep middle class, working class, and vulnerable families safe and healthy in order to pay for tax cuts for billionaires," Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement, warning that the administration's budget blueprint would condemn "Americans to preventable disease and death."
“Morally obscene”
"If this dangerous budget was ever enacted, communities across the United States would suffer," said DeLauro. "The Trump administration is aiming to further eviscerate the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration—agencies that boost public health, protect Americans from infectious diseases, lead the world in biomedical research, and help keep our food and drugs safe. President Trump and RFK Jr. want to eliminate programs focused on chronic disease, substance abuse treatment, and mental health services that save lives."
Trump and his allies, including world's richest man Elon Musk, have cast their push for large-scale funding cuts across the federal government as a necessary bid to eliminate waste and abuse.
But as the president targets programs such as Head Start—which cost the federal government roughly $12 billion in fiscal year 2024—he is pursuing a record $1 trillion for the U.S. military, a hotbed of waste and fraud.
"Your budget proposal is morally obscene," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a message to the White House late last week. "It must be defeated."
Common Dreams work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
As Foodborne Illnesses Sicken Tens of Millions Each Year, FDA Falls Behind On Mandated Inspections
A government watchdog criticized the Food and Drug Administration for failing to meet the required level of inspections each year, partly caused by disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic.
By Sky Chadde, Investigate Midwest (1/16/25)
The Food and Drug Administration has not performed its legally required number of food safety inspections each year since 2018, according to a new government watchdog report.
Each year, about one in six Americans falls ill to foodborne illnesses, and oversight agencies have routinely found that the U.S. food safety system — a shared responsibility of the FDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and several others — falls short.
In 2017, the Government Accountability Office called for a unified strategy to address food safety, as no less than eight different federal departments had a hand in fortifying the nation’s food. And in 2018, the GAO criticized the USDA for not doing enough to keep foodborne pathogens out of the nation’s meat supply.
In 2021, ProPublica found that the USDA knew of an ongoing salmonella outbreak but had allowed contaminated meat to continue to be sold.
Generally, the USDA inspects meat and poultry, and it sometimes has inspectors stationed inside large meat processing plants. The FDA inspects fruits, vegetables, dairy products and processed foods — about 80% of the food supply. It also inspects food overseas that will be imported to the U.S.
“Given the large number of food facilities and the agency’s limited resources, meeting the existing inspection mandates has been challenging for the agency,” the FDA told the GAO. However, the “FDA is excited for the work underway” at the agency to address food safety.
In October 2024, the FDA announced it was implementing a near agency-wide reorganization that it said would help it better oversee the nation’s food supply.
The reorganization was prompted, in part, by the FDA’s delayed response to a whistleblower complaint about infant formula produced at an Abbott Nutrition factory. Despite receiving the complaint, the agency took no action for 15 months, during which time several infants fell ill after consuming the contaminated formula.
In its announcement, the FDA said it was “focused on transforming the agency to be more efficient, nimble and ready for the future.”
COVID-19 inhibited inspections
The FDA is required to inspect about 75,000 food facilities in the U.S. each year, according to the GAO’s report, published Jan. 8. However, between 2018 and 2023, the latest year data is available, it failed to perform the number of inspections mandated by the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act.
One reason the FDA fell behind was the COVID-19 pandemic. It affected the agency’s ability to conduct in-person inspections (as it did for other agencies, such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration).
The year of the pandemic, the FDA only inspected 7% of facilities identified as “high-risk” for foodborne illnesses, according to the GAO. The number increased to about half the following years.
Still, the pandemic created a significant backlog, which the agency is still dealing with, the GAO said.
“While it is unclear when FDA will be able to clear the backlog of past due inspections created during the pandemic, FDA officials told us they are taking steps to address it,” the watchdog said in its report. …
How Musk’s Cuts To Federal Regulation Could — Quite Literally — Maim Or Kill You
Massive deregulation can fuel major disasters that far outstrip its estimated "savings," plus the human toll.
[Editor’s Note: While I’m not a big fan of MSNBC, Ari Melber does an excellent job of walking viewers through the positive — and necessary — role of government regulation in keeping food safe, banking less corrupt and the public safe. As anyone who read Upton Sinclair’s classic 1905 novel “The Jungle” knows, food processing before government oversight was a deadly nightmare. A nightmare Trump and the Republicans are bringing on rerun. — Mark Taylor]
MSNBC (4/16/25)
Ari Melber's special report documents the alarming history showing the cost of slashing rules and regulations, as President Trump and Elon Musk cut government oversight. Drawing on exhaustive reporting, history, policy findings and iconic films based on real-world deregulatory horror stories, Melber meticulously shows specific examples of how massive deregulation can fuel major disasters that far outstrip its estimated "savings," plus the human toll.
20-minute video
It looks like hysteria to me. MSM is assisting government functionaries who are desperate to hang onto their jobs.