\n<\/p>\n
Sweeping cuts and the \u201cpoliticization of science\u201d inside the Food and Drug Administration have increased the risk of safety lapses across the US, former agency workers warned.<\/p>\n
Less than a year after Donald Trump returned to power, and his administration oversaw the firing and resignation of thousands of FDA employees, a listeria outbreak that killed six people and sickened 27 across 18 states due to contamination of prepared pasta meals underlined the danger posed by safety failings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose kinds of things are going to keep coming,\u201d said David Harbourt, a former veterinary safety manager at the FDA, who was fired last year. The agency\u2019s work \u201chas been compromised for at a minimum, the short term, hopefully not the long term\u201d, he claimed. \u201cBut it\u2019s those aspects of American people\u2019s lives that we almost take for granted that are going to be affected in a very negative way in the coming years.\u201d<\/p>\n
About 19,700 employees worked at the agency before Trump officials introduced waves of firings, voluntary retirement and resignation programs. Thousands subsequently left, although some workers were later rehired.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am concerned that by letting go so many people, by offering early retirement, it\u2019s like that kids\u2019 game Jenga where you pile up all these wooden pieces,\u201d said Sandra Eskin, CEO of Stop Foodborne Illness, a non-profit, and former deputy under secretary for food safety at the US Department of Agriculture. \u201cAnd if you pull one out from the bottom or even the middle, the whole thing falls apart.<\/p>\n
The FDA \u201cdoes not have a robust inspection program for the foods that it regulates\u201d, she said. \u201cAnd so if that\u2019s your baseline, and then you\u2019re cutting back inspectors, then that is very concerning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foreign food inspections by the FDA have dropped to the lowest on record since the agency began inspecting foreign food facilities in 2011, aside from during the Covid-19 pandemic. Domestic inspections also steeply declined.<\/p>\n
Due to cuts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which works with the FDA and other agencies to conduct surveillance for food pathogens, reduced the number of pathogens they surveil through its Foodnet surveillance program from eight to two.<\/p>\n
Frank Yiannas, former FDA deputy commissioner for food policy and response under the first Trump administration, and into the Biden administration, expressed concern about the reduction in surveillance, with food recalls already on the rise. \u201cFoodnet and the pathogens that they track is critical, because it\u2019s the ultimate scorecard of whether we\u2019re getting better or worse on performance in food safety,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cConsumers in general, when they hear there are cuts to food-borne disease surveillance programs at the CDC, they should pay attention,\u201d added Yiannas. \u201cIt\u2019s not a good idea if any food-borne illness remains invisible. We need to know about these things so that we can gather why they happen in the first place, and inform future prevention.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the FDA grapples with these cuts, former workers criticized the treatment of employees, the wastefulness of firings and rehirings, and dismissed claims by the Trump administration that the cuts have no impact on the agency\u2019s ability to effectively execute its mission.<\/p>\n
Harbourt, the fired safety manager, said his position\u2019s responsibilities were replaced with two full-time employees, who were pulled away from their initial employment positions. \u201cTurning the federal government into a temp employee agency is going to have negative effects for all Americans across a number of different aspects of their lives \u2013 some of which we\u2019re already seeing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Rightwing media pundits have called federal employees \u201centitled bureaucrats\u201d, \u201cworthless parasites\u201d, and \u201ccompletely worthless\u201d amid cuts to the federal workforce. Russell Vought, whom Trump tapped to lead the office of management and budget, stated shortly before the 2024 election that \u201cwe want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vast majority of federal employees really do try to do the best work for the American public,\u201d added Harbourt. \u201cSeeing that framed as something where we\u2019re all worthless, and we\u2019re just leeches on the American taxpayer is objectively false, and it\u2019s been a really discouraging aspect of this whole process.\u201d<\/p>\n
A former FDA employee, who requested to remain anonymous to speak without fear of retaliation, criticized the manner in which the administration is transforming the agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are seeing more policy announcements through journal articles and podcasts rather than through carefully constructed guidance documents that allow for the public to provide comment,\u201d they said. \u201cThe FDA has always steered clear from politics as much as it was able, but we\u2019ve seen such a politicization of science with this administration.\u201d<\/p>\n
A third former employee at the FDA, who also requested to remain anonymous, said: \u201cFor impact public health-wise, this is devastating. Agencies like FDA rely on scientific studies, but do you know what can\u2019t happen without funding? Research. And federal agencies have a responsibility to report to the American people, so without communications professionals, research findings and reporting does not get shared and agency web pages sit stagnant.\u201d<\/p>\n
The current leader of the FDA, Martin Makary, and Robert FKennedy Jr, head of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the agency, have both pushed and touted health related conspiracy theories. Makary recently promoted lab leak conspiracy theories about HIV and Lyme disease on a podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cScientific integrity has been destroyed by Secretary Kennedy and Secretary Makary. Many longtime FDA leaders have been pushed out, or left, because there is no more credibility in US public health,\u201d the former employee said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that this decimation of the federal workforce will set us back as a country for decades,\u201d they said. \u201cWe are no longer a world leader in public health, and that\u2019s a scary thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Department of Health and Human Services <\/em>did not comment on Makary\u2019s recent claims. \u201cFDA inspectors were not impacted, and this critical work will continue uninterrupted,\u201d Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson, said. \u201cThe FDA remains fully committed to protecting the public and ensuring the safety and efficacy of the products it regulates. Enforcement decisions are grounded in the latest gold-standard science. This will not change.\u201d<\/p>\n Another former FDA employee, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said it was \u201cabsurd\u201d to claim that thousands of job cuts would have no impact. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t even pass the laugh test,\u201d they said. \u201cWhat organization isn\u2019t going to be impacted by the departure, not just of a lot of people, but entire offices?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sweeping cuts and the \u201cpoliticization of science\u201d inside the Food and Drug Administration have increased the risk of safety lapses across the US, former agency workers warned. Less than a year after Donald Trump returned to power, and his administration oversaw the firing and resignation of thousands of FDA employees, a listeria outbreak that killed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[794,562,22106,1725,2586,17199,736,253,81,1952,1438],"class_list":{"0":"post-41531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-cuts","10":"tag-exfda","11":"tag-food","12":"tag-increase","13":"tag-lapses","14":"tag-risk","15":"tag-safety","16":"tag-trump","17":"tag-warn","18":"tag-workers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}