Reinstate FDA Staff and Food Safety Protocols

Since Trump took office in 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been hit hard by staffing cuts, leadership turnover, and policy changes—and the result is a food safety system that is slower to respond to outbreaks and less prepared to prevent them.

The FDA has lost thousands of employees due to staffing cuts, and the CDC and USDA’s meat and poultry inspection service have lost thousands more. Some of the hardest-hit teams worked behind the scenes, coordinating with international regulators, booking travel for inspectors, and running quality-control checks on food testing labs. Entire advisory committees on food safety and meat and poultry inspection were eliminated, and two federal parasitology labs that researched foodborne pathogens were told to relocate or shut down, with no plan in place to move their equipment or research. The CDC also removed several pathogens, including the parasite Cyclospora, from the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet).


Americans are already feeling the impact. The FDA’s inspector workforce remains a fraction of what the agency actually needs to cover the country’s food facilities. And this summer, the U.S. saw its largest-ever outbreak of cyclosporiasis, a parasitic illness traced to contaminated lettuce, with more than 15,700 cases confirmed. Public health experts say the response has been slower and more disorganized than it should be, in large part because the staff and labs that would normally coordinate that response no longer exist.

Food safety isn’t a partisan issue. Congress must press the FDA and HHS to reinstate the food safety officials, inspectors, and laboratory staff who have been laid off or reassigned, and to fully fund food safety inspection and outbreak-response programs at the FDA, CDC, and USDA.