The food safety division of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the latest federal body to be hit by cuts from the Trump Administration, with more than 5,000 probationary employees seeing their contracts terminate across the US Department of Health and Human Services.
An anonymous FDA staffer who is familiar with the firings has stated that new employees responsible for food ingredient safety assessments will be fired, potentially causing extended wait times for companies submitting their products for approval.
It is currently unknown how many staff the Trump Administration plans to eliminate from the FDA, though 700 employees have already been laid off at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); a number that will likely rise to nearly 1,300.*
The cuts also extend to the FDA’s departments focused on medical device and tobacco regulation.
Around 50% of the FDA’s $6.9bn budget is obtained from fees paid by companies the agency is responsible for regulating — including food, drug, and medical device makers — and the elimination of these roles will not impact government spending.
This information was made public through an audio recording of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) department meeting.
Robert Kennedy Jr. and the “war on public health”
The FDA, which currently employs just under 20,000 people, has been a target of the new Trump Administration — and specifically United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — for some time.
The newly appointed Health Secretary stated that the agency has been “waging a war on public health”, as it has not yet approved treatments such as psychedelics, chelation therapy and stem cell treatments.
He has also vouched to remove thousands of food chemicals and colourings from US-distributed food products, though the cuts enforced by the Trump Administration have got rid of many of the staffers responsible for food ingredient assessments.
This news follows on from a tumultuous few years for the FDA, as many inspectors left their positions during the COVID-19 pandemic; meaning that a large proportion of the workforce were new or recent hires.
A former FDA official believes that “cutting recent hires could backfire”, as it will remove younger employees who may be more up-to-date with their technical skills.
In 2022, the Government Accountability Office stated that the FDA has “historically faced challenges in recruiting and retaining staff,” which is mostly because of the better wage available to staff in the private sector.
It is yet to be seen what the impact of these lay-offs will be, but Mitch Zeller, former FDA director for tobacco, said the firings will “demoralise and undermine the spirit of the federal workforce.”
*Source: a group speaking on the firings to the Associated Press, who are shielded for anonymity purposes