Ex-FDA workers warn Trump cuts will increase risk of food safety lapses in US (January 2026)
www.theguardian.com

... Sweeping cuts and the "politicization of science" 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 six people and sickened 27 across 18 states due to contamination of prepared pasta meals underlined the danger posed by safety failings.

"Those kinds of things are going to keep coming," said David Harbourt, a former veterinary safety manager at the FDA, who was fired last year. The agency's work "has been compromised for at a minimum, the short term, hopefully not the long term", he claimed. "But it's those aspects of American people's lives that we almost take for granted that are going to be affected in a very negative way in the coming years."

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.

"I am concerned that by letting go so many people, by offering early retirement, it's like that kids' game Jenga where you pile up all these wooden pieces," 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. "And if you pull one out from the bottom or even the middle, the whole thing falls apart. ...