Here are some figures to digest: an estimated 48 million people get sick from foodborne diseases each year, with 3,000 of those dying from the diseases contracted. Not helping those numbers is the fact that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — the federal agency tasked with testing the food we eat — has not met its inspection targets for seven years, averaging 8,353 domestic and 917 foreign inspections between 2018 and 2023, according to the Government Accountability Office. So you know what that means, time to cut inspections altogether! I do believe that’s trademarked Covid-era Trump Math, to make the numbers look better… by taking them out of the equation entirely. So far, the RFK Jr.-run Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) denies this reporting that the FDA is about to end food safety inspections. Sure, Jan. Because laying off 10,000 employees across all federal health agencies is in no way a precursor to those agencies being unable to do their lifesaving work.
A spokesperson told The Independent that the FDA is actively working to ensure continuity of operations during the reorganization period and remains committed to ensuring critical programs and inspections continue.
One former official told CBS News that FDA employees have been working on a possible shift of the agency’s food efforts to states for years, which could give the department the room to focus on higher priority and foreign inspections and help tackle case backloads.
“There’s so much work to go around. And us duplicating their work just doesn’t make sense,” one former FDA official, who worked on the plans before leaving the agency and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said.
Notably, some inspections are already outsourced. The FDA says it may conduct inspections using state partnering agencies and that they also can be conducted by “foreign countries with whom we have Memoranda of Understanding or similar agreements.”
State inspectors who conduct inspections are trained by the FDA to ensure consistency across state and federal efforts. State partners and the FDA share findings from their inspections.
“The FDA prioritizes inspections using a risk-based approach that takes into account today’s global food supply and markets and focuses on issues of food safety that may affect public health,” it says.
It remains unclear what would happen in states that don’t have contracts with the FDA to conduct inspections.
Recent layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services are also a factor. The department initially let go some 10,000 across agencies. With fewer staff members, come fewer inspections that can be done. CBS News previously reported that the FDA is planning to hire contractors in an attempt to fill that gap.
A report released by the Government Accountability Office earlier this year … said FDA officials had already cited limited workforce capacity as the FDA’s “primary challenge to meeting inspection targets,” and that the agency had not identified and implemented additional procedures for minimizing incidences where investigators attempt but are unable to complete an inspection.
“In theory, relying on states to do more routine food inspection work could lead to better food safety,” Thomas Gremillion, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, told CBS News.
“So far, this administration has acted with reckless disregard for how its policies will affect the detection and prevention of foodborne illness, and any plans to replace federal food inspectors with some other workforce deserve suspicion,” he said.
“State inspectors who conduct inspections are trained by the FDA to ensure consistency across state and federal efforts. … It remains unclear what would happen in states that don’t have contracts with the FDA to conduct inspections.” I don’t know, I think I have a pretty clear idea of what’s gonna happen: blue states will keep up with science-based food safety inspections, red states will let their citizens get gravely sick from drinking raw milk, and blue state resources (medical services and/or taxes) will end up being used to fix the catastrophe, which of course will cost more from the damage control end as opposed to prevention. Right? Because it’s not just wack job extremist food items like RFK Jr.’s beloved raw milk that the FDA works to protect us from; it’s everything mainstream as well, like Trump’s favorite McDonald’s, which had an E. coli outbreak thanks to a batch of onions last October. Anyway, look out for the imminent announcement that all FDA inspectors had to be fired cause something something DEI. MAGA: Make Americans Gastrically Afraid.
