Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned imports from eight companies that had shipped clams from China contaminated with PFAS – a class of toxins known as forever chemicals because they don’t break down in the body.

But when the alert went out, several of the food safety scientists who had kept the tainted shellfish from reaching American consumers were no longer at the agency. Days before, they had received a terse email from the federal Office of Personnel Management telling them they had been fired. 

They were among hundreds whose positions were cut across the FDA in February as part of the chaotic slashing of more than 100,000 federal workers since President Donald Trump took office. Led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, many of these dismissals targeted recently hired “probationary” workers who had fewer job protections. 

The targeting of newer workers made the FDA’s Human Foods Program – established just last October as part of an agency re-organization – especially vulnerable. As the primary watchdog for America’s food supply, the division’s responsibilities range from testing foods for microbes and chemicals to educating consumers on nutrition. Eighty-nine staffers were fired from the program, its departing director Jim Jones, said in his resignation letter protesting the terminations. Some have since reportedly been rehired. 

 The firings are part of an array of recent cuts to food safety programs whose consequences are only beginning to emerge. Freezes on government-issued credit cards left some FDA staff unable to buy food from grocery stores for testing. Committees that advise the government on meat inspections and microbiological safety were abruptly shut down at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which also saw major layoffs. Further layoffs are expected in the days ahead after agencies across the federal government faced a March 13 deadline to submit plans to slash their workforces to the Trump administration.

Together, these moves weaken a food safety system already strained by budget cuts and understaffing and pose a growing threat to the reliability of America’s food supply, former FDA officials, leading food safety advocates and recently dismissed workers told The Examination.

“Going into the grocery store and picking out food, there's a lot that scientists from the Food and Drug Administration do to make sure that the food is safe,” said one staffer who was fired from the FDA’s Office of Laboratory Operations and Applied Sciences in February. 

The FDA staffer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of jeopardizing possible reinstatement, said their team had been preparing to train field officers across the country on protocols to test products for PFAS. Before they were let go, the effort was stalled indefinitely following a freeze on funds allocated to travel, the staffer said.

The FDA cutbacks also imperil food safety oversight at the state level, which accounts for the majority of inspections: nearly three quarters of manufactured foods, more than 90% of produce and all grocery stores and restaurants in the U.S. are inspected by state and local officials. 

The FDA terminations last month included four retail specialists who trained and assisted in state inspections of restaurants and grocery stories around the country, said Steven Mandernach, executive director of the Association of Food and Drug Officials, a trade association.

State and local officials also carry out lab testing, investigate illness outbreaks and execute recalls by removing unsafe foods from shelves.

“They’re the boots on the ground doing the work every day,” Mandernach said.

These state operations rely on the FDA for a significant portion of their funding – and that support has been slashed as well.

The FDA’s backing for state and local food programs was already set to be reduced by nearly 30% this fiscal year, from $117 million to $83 million. These rollbacks, ordered by the Biden administration, are now coalescing with the ongoing federal job cuts and funding disruptions under Trump.

In Minnesota, federal funding cuts are forcing the state to consider layoffs of food safety workers and reduced food safety inspections, according to Commissioner of Agriculture Thom Petersen. He said state and federal budget decisions in the next few weeks will be crucial for the food safety operations he oversees.

“There’s some really tough conversations we’re having at this moment,” Petersen said. “We’re not at Defcon 5 yet but we’re getting there.”  

‘We’re going to miss things’

The FDA’s Human Foods Program was established in October 2024 — with a staff of about 2,000 — as part of a sweeping reorganization of the agency. The shake-up unified the FDA’s food operations with the goals of preventing food safety harms, elevating nutrition and strengthening partnerships with states, the agency wrote at the time.

Critics contend the FDA was already falling short of ensuring a safe food supply, largely due to chronic underfunding and lack of staff. The law requires routine inspections of domestic food facilities once every five years (or every three years for high-risk sites), and only a small fraction of imported food is inspected. Those inspections could become even more infrequent if the agency loses resources, making the system more reliant on manufacturers policing their own operations.

Experts say an overreliance on the industry to keep food safe can enable food makers to cut corners in complying with safety regulations. 

“Food companies are run by humans. Humans tend not to do things they don’t have to,” said Marion Nestle, a former professor of food studies at New York University, in an email. “One such thing is following elaborate food safety regulations. We have plenty of historical examples demonstrating just that.” 

In 2023, for example, hundreds of American children were poisoned by applesauce pouches sold in grocery and dollar stores due to lead-tainted cinnamon that went from Sri Lanka to Ecuador to the United States. An investigation by The Examination and The New York Times found that the products sailed through a series of checkpoints in a food safety system meant to protect American consumers.

Similarly, infant formula recalls in 2021 and 2022 resulted in four hospitalizations and two deaths – controversies that helped propel the agency’s reorganization. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been a fierce critic of the food industry and vowed to crack down on harmful foods as part of his campaign to make Americans healthier. Last week, the FDA said it would re-evaluate its process for approving food additives and Kennedy told leading food industry CEOs that he expected them to remove artificial dyes from their products. 

The sweeping cuts to food safety programs are now raising concerns about the government’s ability to implement these kinds of ambitious food safety initiatives. 

“In my experience the way you achieve these things cost money and require regulation,” said Jerold Mande, a former senior advisor to the FDA Commissioner on nutrition and food safety and professor of nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “But they’ve begun by undoing a lot of that groundwork that was put in place.”

One recently fired FDA scientist said they had worked on reviewing dozens of samples, including imported seafood, to test that they did not contain elevated levels of PFAS before they were let go. These chemicals, which can leak into water, air, and can be found in everything from non-stick cookware to fast-food packaging, have been linked to increased risk of certain cancers, decreased fertility and low birth weight in children.

Kennedy has also made inaccurate claims suggesting that industry funds the FDA's food programs, according to Jones’ resignation later.

But unlike other parts of the FDA, like the Center for Tobacco Products, funded through industry user fees, the Human Foods Program relies almost entirely on congressional appropriations. As a result, additional FDA rollbacks would likely hit the foods program especially hard.

“I do think that they would be uniquely vulnerable,” said Barbara Kowalcyk, director of the Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security at George Washington University. “When the overall budget of the FDA gets cut, really one of the few places that you can take money from is the foods program.”

The justification given for the dismissal of two recently fired FDA employees who spoke to The Examination was poor performance, even though they received positive performance reviews just months earlier. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents FDA employees, is exploring options to challenge the layoffs, according to the union’s website. 

On March 13, a federal judge in Maryland ordered a dozen federal departments including the Health and Human Services department to reinstate probationary workers who he said were collectively fired under false pretenses. The two fired FDA staffers who spoke to The Examination have since received notice that they were being put on paid leave.

The Trump administration is planning further cuts across the federal government under a separate, agency-led process known as reductions in force expected to play out in the coming weeks and months. 

The FDA said in a statement that it was committed to monitoring food imports and to keeping consumers safe.

“The FDA is working with new HHS leadership to safeguard the food supply and ensure that food is a vehicle for wellness,” an FDA spokesperson said. “The agency will continue to follow our authorities and leverage our resources to protect the health of consumers.”    

Experts told The Examination that if food safety cutbacks and firings continue, more unsafe foods will reach the market and the government will be less able to respond effectively when people start getting sick.

The stakes couldn’t be higher for many of these advocates, such as Kowalcyk, who shifted from her career in the pharmaceutical industry to promote food safety after she lost her son to a foodborne E.Coli infection in 2001.

“My son went from being perfectly healthy to death in 12 days,” Kowalcyk said.

She fears that if the food safety system continues to be depleted, the government will no longer be able to identify and respond effectively to outbreaks of foodborne disease.

“We're already underfunded, and now we're going to go to even less funding, and we're going to miss things,” Kowalcyk said.  “And when we miss things, people are going to get sick and they're going to die.”