FDA cuts imperil food safety, but not how you might think

A pause in checking milk-testing labs. A withdrawn proposal to reduce Salmonella bacteria in raw chicken. A dearth of information about an E. coli outbreak in lettuce.

All have made recent headlines, and all have rung alarm bells about the safety of the United States food supply — as have layoffs at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Department of Agriculture and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

These departments work together with local governments, farms, food companies, distributors and restaurants to help keep meat, dairy, produce and other foods safe. It’s a complicated system with layers of protection built in. Cuts to funding and personnel could erode these protections, says former FDA commissioner Robert Califf, who resigned in January.

Some 46 million Americans get sick from foodborne illnesses every year; 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die. It’s one of the FDA’s missions to try and prevent those illnesses. But recent cuts to our food safety system could put more people at risk, Califf says.

“It’s predictable,” he says. “Unless it’s adequately funded, it will break down.” He and other scientists are thinking about that future instability more than today’s headlines. “I’m not worried about the food I’m buying tomorrow or in a week or in two weeks,” says Martin Wiedmann, a food safety scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. “I’m worried about long-term.”

Califf compares the current U.S. food safety situation to a pothole. At first, maybe the road is a bit bumpy, but people can travel just fine. But eventually, when the road breaks down enough, someone may blow out a tire — or worse.

Food-safety wise, that might look like more outbreaks spawned from contaminated raw foods, or less research into how microplastics in our food supply affect our health. It’s hard to predict where exactly our food safety system may first start to crumble, Califf says. “There are a gazillion places where things could go wrong.”

Science News spoke with Califf, Wiedmann and two other food safety experts about how federal agencies regulate food, how cuts ratchet up uncertainty for already-underfunded safety work and what recent Trump administration actions might mean for consumers. Here’s what we learned.

The U.S. food system is among the world’s safest

Nearly 80 percent of the U.S. food supply is regulated by the FDA. “Everything except barnyard animals and catfish,” Califf says. Those are the USDA’s domain.

Together, the agencies fulfill a vast variety of roles. They include developing good agricultural practices, testing irrigation water, inspecting farms and batches of milk or other products, educating food inspectors at the state level, and working with the CDC to track outbreaks.

Regulators are on the lookout for microbes that can cause illness, like Salmonella, Shiga-toxin-producing E. coli and Listeria. “Listeria is a big thing because it can grow in refrigeration temperatures,” says Kathleen Glass, a microbial food scientist who recently retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

But food safety isn’t just about catching potential outbreaks. It’s about designing processes that minimize risk, Wiedmann says. Think pasteurizing milk or heat-treating deli meats. Steps like these kill dangerous microbes, nipping outbreaks before they start. “For most of this stuff, honestly, we’re doing pretty well,” he says.

By some measures, the U.S. food system is among the best in the world. In a 2022 Economist report that ranked quality and safety of food, for example, the United States came in third, behind Canada and Denmark. That’s a big success, Califf says, especially considering that “the food side of the FDA has been massively underfunded.”

FDA cuts hit an already resource-strapped food safety branch

In 2024, just 17% of the FDA’s nearly $7 billion budget went to regulating food. That’s half of what the agency spent on overseeing drugs. The rest of the FDA’s budget goes to a smorgasbord of other programs, including regulating tobacco, animal feed and medical devices. Funding for the FDA’s food regulating branch has stayed relatively flat for over a decade, mainly just keeping pace with inflation, according to a 2022 evaluation. 

Recent cuts only exacerbate the problem, Califf says. In March, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that the FDA would cut 3,500 FDA employees. Some of those jobs, including those of food scientists, may still be in flux. And it’s unclear how the agency’s layoffs will advance a recently announced effort to systematically review chemicals in foods, like phthalates and titanium dioxide. 

Some of the federal workers cut were probationary employees, typically people hired within the previous two years. “We had just hired a lot of really talented people,” Califf says. As commissioner, he had been trying to beef up the food chemical safety side of the FDA. This part of agency focuses on dietary supplements, chemicals added to foods, like dyes, and chemicals that can get into the food supply, like microplastics and the forever chemicals known as PFAS. Scientists have shown that plastic shards can worm into the brain and may increase the chance of heart attack and stroke.

“Studying these is hard work and takes a lot of data, because the risks are not immediately obvious,” Califf says. It’s possible any toll these chemicals take on the body could come over the course of a lifetime. To understand the risks, he says, you need chemists, biologists, epidemiologist and statisticians — people like those the FDA just fired.

According to the current FDA commissioner, Martin Makary, no FDA scientists have been cut. But “that’s just not true,” Califf says. And though Makary has said no FDA inspectors were laid off, the firing of support staff and communications specialists marks a blow to the agency, Califf says. “Who’s going to notify and explain to people when there’s an outbreak?” he says.

Raw foods carry risks — but it’s important to look beyond the headlines

After one recent outbreak, the FDA remained quiet. In February, the agency decided against publicizing an E. coli outbreak in lettuce that hospitalized dozens of people in late 2024. Some former FDA officials have called in news reports for more transparency.

Lettuce and other raw fruits and vegetables represent one of food safety experts’ main concerns. Such foods were responsible for nearly half of foodborne illness outbreaks in 2019, scientists have reported. These foods can be risky because there isn’t a “kill step,” says Glass. That means the produce comes to consumers without being cooked or heated in a way that kills off microbes.

Experts are less worried about other food safety issues that have erupted in the news. Though milk concerns bubbled up after the FDA suspended a testing program, dairy is safe to consume, says Nicole Martin, a dairy microbiologist at Cornell. Pasteurizing milk acts as a kill step. “I’m still feeding dairy to my children,” she says.

Unlike what consumers may have heard, the FDA didn’t stop milk testing — milk and other dairy products are still being testing for quality and safety. What the agency actually did is stop providing and assessing samples for testing labs to prove their proficiency, Martin says. That’s something labs have to certify annually. Testing labs that relied on the FDA will now have to get samples from other programs to certify that their testing is accurate.

In addition to FDA milk testing efforts, the USDA tests dairy cattle and milk for bird flu, which is caused by a virus that’s killed by pasteurization. Glass sees any real risks from milk coming from drinking it raw. “I grew up on a dairy farm. I drank raw milk,” she says, “and I had the stomach flu a lot.”

Wiedmann, who also grew up drinking raw milk, agrees. And personally, he’s not so worried about Salmonella in raw chicken. (A Biden-era USDA proposal, withdrawn by the Trump administration in April, aimed to reduce levels of the bacterium in raw chicken.) Wiedmann says he makes sure to perform a kill step in his kitchen, cooking the meat thoroughly to wipe out any dangerous microbes. Glass does the same thing with ground beef. “My hamburger is really well cooked,” she says.

Mostly, Weidmann is concerned about how recent anti-science sentiment could affect food safety and public health in the long run. It’s important for regulations to be science-based, he says, and to have regulators who know how to evaluate scientific evidence. Otherwise, he says, the FDA may end up directing its food safety funding and personnel toward controlling things that don’t actually make people sick.