The Trump administration’s staff cuts hit the Department of Health and Human Services at the end of last week, impacting agencies that do food system work, especially the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). According to The Guardian, 5,200 “probationary” employees were cut across the larger agency, including members of FDA’s staff working on the safety of food additives. As the cuts came down, Jim Jones, the director of the FDA’s food division, resigned.
Jones was brought in from the EPA in 2023 to oversee a restructuring of FDA’s food programs intended to prioritize food safety and elevate work on nutrition and diet-related disease. In his resignation letter, he said had been looking forward to working with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose stated goals aligned with those priorities. But he noted he was upset by both the indiscriminate nature of layoffs and accusations that current staff were corrupt. He said 89 people on his team were fired, including those working on the safety of chemicals in food, and that it would be fruitless to try to continue the work.
Advocacy groups including the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) said the cuts would undermine food safety. “If you go into surgery with a hatchet instead of a scalpel, the result is carnage,” said CSPI President Peter Lurie, M.D. On the contrary, at a Politico Live event on Wednesday morning, Kennedy ally Del Bigtree, the founder of MAHA Action, said that he wasn’t sure if Kennedy was driving the cuts but that it’s likely the government is spending too much money on employees who aren’t improving the health of the country. “I can’t imagine what 80,000 employees are needed for when it comes to health,” he said.
The FDA did not respond to a request for comment. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Bloomberg that the cuts were part of President Trump’s mandate to only employ “the best and most qualified people who are also willing to implement his America First Agenda on behalf of the American people.” (Link to this post.)
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