The good news is that the Trump administration’s controversial approach to food safety only matters to Americans who eat food. For everyone else, however, there’s cause for some concern. Reuters reported:
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 FDA this month also suspended existing and developing programs that ensured accurate testing for bird flu in milk and cheese and pathogens like the parasite Cyclospora in other food products.
Though the report hasn’t been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, there have been a variety of related reports of late.
In fact, it was just last week when Reuters also reported that the Trump administration was “suspending a quality control program for its food testing laboratories as a result of staff cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services.”
That news came two weeks after The New York Times reported that Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the department’s conspiratorial secretary, announced “wide-ranging cutbacks at federal health agencies,” including “scientists who tested food and drugs for contaminants or deadly bacteria.”
That news came two weeks after the Times also reported that the FDA delayed — by nearly three years — implementation of a requirement that food companies and grocers “rapidly trace contaminated food through the supply chain and pull it off the shelves.”
The article quoted Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports, saying, “This decision is extremely disappointing and puts consumers at risk of getting sick from unsafe food because a small segment of the industry pushed for delay, despite having 15 years to prepare.”
Sarah Sorscher, director of regulatory affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, added, “This is a huge step backward for food safety.”
That was true, but making matters worse is the number of huge steps backward for food safety. Indeed, at the risk of belaboring the point, the day before the Times published that report, the newspaper ran a related article that noted, “At the Food and Drug Administration, freezes on government credit card spending ordered by the Trump administration have impeded staff members from buying food to perform routine tests for deadly bacteria. In states, a $34 million cut by the F.D.A. could reduce the number of employees who ensure that tainted products — like tin pouches of lead-laden applesauce sold in 2023 — are tested in labs and taken off store shelves.”
The same article went on to note that at Trump’s Agriculture Department, “a committee studying deadly bacteria was recently disbanded, even as it was developing advice on how to better target pathogens that can shut down the kidneys. Committee members were also devising an education plan for new parents on bacteria that can live in powdered infant formula.”
This came on the heels of multiple reports that the Trump administration disbanded two federal committees tasked with advising policymakers on food safety, the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods and the National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection.
Alas, the list keeps going. The Times also reported that the administration has “slowed or stopped some testing of grocery items for hazardous bacteria and monitoring of shellfish and food packaging for PFAS, chemicals linked to cancer and reproductive harm.”
And did I mention that the administration appointed Donald Trump Jr.’s hunting buddy to lead the FDA’s Human Foods Program, overseeing all nutrition and food safety activities? Because that happened, too.
I suspect many Americans who supported the Republican ticket last fall didn’t realize they were voting to scale back food-safety safeguards, but that’s what they’re getting.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
