Tracking Food and Drug Safety During the Trump Administration

Since taking office, Donald Trump has dismantled key federal agencies responsible for overseeing the safety of our food system. 

Notably, many of these agencies were created out of necessity amidst severe public health crises. For example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was established in 1906 by the Pure Food and Drug Act. Its creation followed a series of muckraker journalists inciting a wave of public outcry over horrendous conditions in meatpacking plants. In particular, Upton Sinclar’s The Jungle famously exposed the “prevalence of rotten meat being sold to the public, how chemicals, dirt, and sawdust were used as meat-filler, the shocking numbers of rat infestations in factories, and how laborers would fall into vats and be turned into lard.” 

Since its establishment, the FDA has taken up the crucial task of mediating the relationship between consumers and producers in order to ensure the safety of our food and medicine. The agency oversees “about 20 cents of every dollar spent by U.S. consumers,” including “78 percent of the U.S. food supply,” and “2.8 trillion in consumption of food, medical products, and tobacco.” 

The FDA has since been joined by other federal agencies in overseeing the safety of our food system. According to the National Institutes for Health, these are:

• Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) within the US Department of Agriculture (USDA)
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) within the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

The prescription drugs we take, the moisturizers we apply to our skin, the microwave ovens in our kitchens as well as our pacemakers, prosthetics, infant formulas, dietary supplements, and so many more basic necessities are kept safe by these agencies. Without the leadership of scientists and public health experts with proper staffing and funding, we run the risk of sliding back into the days of unknowingly being poisoned by greedy and extractive corporations (even more than we already were before these cuts, as DOGE has merely accelerated an existing trend toward mindless austerity)

In this project, we are tracking the Trump administration’s personnel cuts, staffing reductions, and their impacts on food and drug safety. 

Timeline of Personnel Firings & Resignations

FDA:

• April 1, 2025:  Director Of The Office Of New Drugs at the Center For Drug Evaluation And Research Peter Stein resigned. 

• April 1, 2025: Director of the Center for Tobacco Products, Brian King, placed on administrative leave.

• March 28, 2025: Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Peter Marks resigned. Peter Marks was the FDA’s “top vaccine official.” 

• March 6, 2025: Director of the Food Division Jim Jones resigned. Jones was helping the FDA reduce “diet-related chronic disease and risks from chemicals in food” before he left. 

• Jan 10, 2025: Commissioner of the FDA Robert M. Califf resigned. Califf noted his role in fighting the opioid crisis, misinformation, H5N1 outbreaks, drops in teenage e-cigarette use, as well as the “largest reorganization in the agency’s history” in his resignation post.

• Jan. 10, 2025: Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) Patrizia Cavazzoni resigned. Cavazzoni was described as a “key FDA official,” and was responsible for overseeing “much of the agency’s drug review work.” 

• Nov. 20, 2025: Deputy Director at the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Doug Throckmorton announced his retirement, which took effect in early January of 2025. Throckmorton was described as a “unifying force,” and was responsible for “opioid oversight” as well as “the center’s drug shortage and controlled substance policy.”

• Dec. 19, 2024: Senior Advisor for Clinical Science and Drug Reviews, Former Deputy Director Of The Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), Robert Temple retired. Temple has been called the “father of [the] modern FDA.” Temple had worked at the agency since 1972 and has been credited with inventing many of the regulatory standards the FDA’s drug program uses today. 

• Dec. 17, 2024: Principal Deputy Commissioner of the FDA Namandjé Bumpus, resigned. Bumpus was described as the “second in command” at the agency. She was responsible for “leading efforts to modernize and consolidate FDA’s laboratories.”

USDA:

• March 19, 2025: Undersecretary for research, education and economics, USDA’s “Chief Scientist”, Chavonda Jacobs-Young, retired two years earlier than she previously intended to. 
• January 29, 2025: Inspector General Phyllis Fong was fired, and forcibly removed from the White House by security agents after refusing to comply with the order. Her office was previously involved in the USDA’s efforts to investigate the Boar’s Head listeria outbreak.   

National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS): 

• April 16, 2025: Senior Advisor to the Acting Administrator of NMFS, Caitlin Adams, was reported to have been fired. 

Timeline of Staffing Reductions

FDA:

Total: 3,500 employees are set to leave or have left since Trump took office

• 4/25/25: 3,500 FDA employees laid off. The employees lost included “experts who navigated a maze of laws to determine if an expensive drug can be sold as a low-cost generic; lab scientists who tested food and drugs for contaminants or deadly bacteria; veterinary division specialists investigating bird flu transmission; and researchers who monitored televised ads for false claims about prescription drugs.” Scientists who studied the health effects of e-cigarettes were also reportedly put on paid leave with no clear indications of a return date.

• 170 workers were cut from the Office of Inspections and Investigations as part of the larger staff reductions.
• Workers from the Human Foods Program, which oversees food safety, were laid off.

USDA:

Total: About 12,000 employees are set to leave or have left since Trump took office

• 4/10/25: About 12,000 USDA employees have accepted resignation offers. 1,200 of these workers were at the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

• 3/12/2025: The USDA Eliminated Two Of Its Advisory Committees Dedicated To Food Safety – Including One For Meat And Poultry Inspection. The Brooke Rollins-led USDA eliminated the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods and the National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection. The panels helped provide research and analysis to be used by regulatory agencies.

National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS): 

Total: About 2,300 employees are set to leave or have left since Trump took office.

• 4/21/25: 2,300 NOAA employees, about 19% of 2024’s staff, have resigned, been fired, or are in the process of being fired. The losses at the Fisheries service are believed to “have been roughly proportional to NOAA’s as a whole.”

NOTE: The counts of total employees lost in this section are estimates that will not be confirmed until quarterly staffing data is available through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). 

Impact on Food and Drug Safety

• 4/28/25: Trump’s FDA Is Suspected Of Slowing Down Its Approval Of Covid-19 Vaccines. According to NBC, “Former government health officials fear the Trump administration is moving to slow-walk vaccine approvals, including by imposing new regulatory hurdles on drugmakers, such as changing the requirements for approval or seeking additional clinical trial data.” The agency is requiring the Novavax vaccine producer to undergo new clinical trials for its Covid-19 vaccine, even though it has been available under emergency use authorization since 2022. Other vaccines which received yearly updates have not been required to undergo new clinical trials. The Trump-appointed head of the FDA, Marty Makary, had voiced skepticism to Biden’s vaccine mandates during the pandemic. His senior advisor, Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg, “rose to prominence during the pandemic as a vocal critic of the Covid vaccines, particularly for children.”

• 4/24/25: The USDA Withdrew Plans To Limit Salmonella In Poultry. The proposed rules would have required poultry companies to monitor the amount of salmonella in their meat and keep them under a threshold set by the USDA. They would have also required poultry companies to test “for the presence of six strains most associated with illness.” Poultry would be blocked from sale and “subject to recall” if found with salmonella levels above the USDA’s threshold, or with one of the six strains. The rule was proposed by Biden’s USDA in August after having been developed for three years. According to the CDC, “Salmonella bacteria cause about 1.35 million infections, 26,500 hospitalizations, and 420 deaths in the United States every year. Food is the source for most of these illnesses.”

• 4/22/25: The FDA Suspended Quality Control Testing Program For Fluid Milk And Other Dairy Products. The quality testing program ensures that food safety tests for milk conducted at food safety laboratories are consistent and accurate. The program that was suspended included testing done for Grade A milk, which is supposed to meet “the highest sanitary standards.” The program was suspended because the FDA’s Moffett Center Proficiency Testing Laboratory does not have enough staff. The interruption in quality testing for dairy comes on top of the previous, wider, suspension of the Food Emergency Response Network’s proficiency testing. 

• 4/18/25: The FDA Is Reportedly Planning On Ending Federal Food Inspections. The plans would supposedly shift most of the FDA’s routine food inspections to local-level authorities. However, there is no guarantee that the slack would be picked up. While the agency currently works with states to conduct inspections, seven of them do not have contracts. Cuts to staffing call into question whether the shift is being planned to increase the quality of inspections, or simply because of a shortage of federal level staffers and scientific leadership. Additionally, funding for state-level inspections was “cut dramatically” by a re-organization initiated during the Biden administration which took effect in 2025. 

• 4/17/25: The FDA’s Food Emergency Response Network Suspended Its Quality Control Program That Helped Ensure Proper Food Inspections Due To Staff Cuts. The FDA suspended its Food Emergency Response Network’s “proficiency testing program.” This program was conducted to “ensure consistency and accuracy across the agency’s network of about 170 labs that test food for pathogens and contaminants to prevent foodborne illness.” It is currently suspended until September 30.  

• 4/17/25: Heavy Metals Such As Mercury, Lead, And Cadmium Were Found In Many Popular Brands Of Toothpaste. In a report from Lead Safe Mama, high concentrations of heavy metals were found in toothpaste: “About 90% of toothpastes contained lead, 65% contained arsenic, just under half contained mercury, and one-third had cadmium. Many brands contain a number of the toxins.” Although none of the concentrations exceeded the federal level limits, many of them did exceed limits recently imposed by the state of Washington. For example, the FDA has set the federal limit for lead in fluoride-free toothpaste at 10,000 parts per billion (ppb), and 20,000 ppb for fluoride toothpaste. The state of Washington, however, enacted a 1,000 ppb limit. 3 of the toothpastes in Lead Safe Mama’s tests, all of them for children, surpassed Washington’s limit by several thousand ppb.

• 4/8/25: Food Inspections Were Lagging Behind Their Mandated Level Due To Staffing Shortages Which Pre-Date Trump. The FDA has not inspected the number of domestic food facilities required by the Food Safety Modernization Act since 2018. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), this was because of pre-existing staffing shortages.

• 4/3/25: Reuters: “FDA Suspends Program To Improve Bird Flu Testing Due To Staff Cuts.” The Program, which was called, “The Interlaboratory Comparison Exercise for Detecting Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza,” was created to help the agency mitigate the ongoing spread of bird flu. The program “would have included more than 40 laboratories across FDA’s Veterinary Laboratory Investigation and Response Network (Vet-LIRN) and USDA’s National Animal Health Laboratory Network, as well as FDA food labs and private industry.” 

• 3/21/25: The USDA Announced It Will Allow Meat Processing Facilities To Accelerate Their Line Speeds. Brooke Rollins’ USDA announced a new policy that allows the department to issue waivers to meat processing plants who want to increase the speed at which they process meat and poultry. Reports funded by the USDA confirm that meat processing workers face significant health risks, which could be made worse by increasing line speeds. However, the agency also announced it will “no longer require plants to submit redundant worker safety data” – information the Biden administration had required when it allowed 6 plants to operate with faster speeds in a trial program. Apart from leading to severe health side effects for meat packing workers, speeding up line work could also spread diseases, such as bird flu.

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