Trump purge at FDA and USDA triggers food safety ‘brain drain’

Since the start of the second Trump presidency, the federal government has slashed nearly a quarter of a million employees, with some of the biggest staff cuts taking place in government entities connected to the food supply.

Experts in the food and beverage industry warn that the cuts leave the nation’s regulatory infrastructure weakened, which puts food and beverage manufacturers at risk.

The US Department of Personnel Management’s (OPM) Federal Workforce Data tool shows the Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services are among the hardest hit, losing 22,253 and 17,406 jobs, respectively, since the beginning of 2025.

HHS currently employs 75,134 and the Department of Agriculture employs 72,049, according to OPM.

Deep government cuts

Employee cuts have touched almost every part of the federal government. The Food and Drug Administration lost 3,859 employees in 2025 and 473 so far in 2026, according to OPM. The FDA currently employs 16,602.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has cut 2,889 jobs from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (which has 9,769 employees), 913 FTEs from the Food Safety Inspection Service (7,526 employees) and 564 staff from the Food and Nutrition Service (1,224 employees).

Cuts also hit the Federal Trade Commission (296 employees), Environmental Protection Agency (3,046 employees) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (284 employees).

Mass layoffs at FDA made headlines in February 2025, when Deputy Commissioner Jim Jones abruptly resigned from his role overseeing the Human Foods Program, following the wholesale termination of thousands of HHS workers.

Jones said in his resignation letter a year ago that the “indiscriminate firing of 89 staff in the Human Foods Program is beyond short-sighted,” calling their technical, professional and ethical standards “the envy of the world.”

“They included staff with highly technical expertise in nutrition, infant formula, food safety response and even 10 chemical safety staff hired to review potentially unsafe ingredients in our food supply,” Jones wrote. “Their termination will be one more roadblock to achieving the secretary’s stated objectives of making America healthy again.”

Within days of the layoffs, which were implemented by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), HHS moved to rescind some of the terminations overseeing medical devices, food ingredients and other critical roles within FDA, according to the Associated Press.

Food safety regulators needed

The chaotic wave of staff cuts has come with warnings from across the food and beverage supply chain. In February 2025, a coalition of consumer, industry and public health groups sent a letter to FDA saying cuts could jeopardize the safety of the food supply.

The statement noted an under-resourced food safety agency could jeopardize HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s “stated objectives to improve nutrition and ingredient safety for children and adults. Adequate resources are critical not only for outbreak response but also for developing and updating food safety standards, providing science-based industry guidance, and ensuring a well-trained federal-state inspection force to protect the integrity of our food system.“

Regulatory oversight cuts at FDA and HHS pose a wide range of threats to food and beverage manufacturers, according to food industry experts.

Agencies are unable to fulfill their mission without expert staff – and that means trouble for CPG companies,

Marion Nestle, Paulette Goddard professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health, Emerita at New York State University, said in an email to FoodNavigator.

“Without them, companies are on their own,” she said. “The staff cuts can allow companies to do what they like without fear of regulatory oversight. I’ve long argued that firm oversight is good for the food industry.

“It establishes a level playing field and induces trust. And do we ever need that right now.”

Is bureaucracy a problem?

Bureaucracies with tens of thousands of employees may have unnecessary layers of managers and administrators, which can undergo reasonable cuts, but bureaucracies are often complex for good reasons, according to Don Schaffner, department chair for the Department of Food and Science at Rutgers University.

Even large bureaucracies should not be cut indiscriminately or without some consideration, Schaffner said in an email.

“It seems to me that many of the DOGE cuts were the opposite of this,” he said, adding that terminating workers and later replacing them comes with its own problems.

“Fewer inspectors mean fewer inspections and longer intervals between inspections,” Schaffner said. “Even if more inspectors were to be hired tomorrow, being able to conduct a proper inspection requires significant training.”

That means slower response times during outbreaks or emergencies, he said.

“Very often when these sorts of events are unfolding, we have imperfect information available. The ability to make good decisions in the absence of full information requires significant expertise,” he said. “Just throwing more bodies at the problem in the short run is unlikely to be productive if those individuals don’t have needed experience.”

Support staff’s critical role

Retaining inspectors and others on the frontlines of food safety while eliminating support staff creates additional challenges, Schaffner said.

“When support staff – who handle IT, travel paperwork, etc. – are cut, this reduces the efficiency of the food safety experts,” he explained. “If they are waiting for computer support or for authorization to travel, this makes it very hard for them to do their jobs.”

Advances in computer technology can help streamline agencies, “but with these efficiencies comes the need for training and support,” Schaffner said.

Prioritizing risk under staff cuts

Prioritizing the riskiest facilities and commodities is one strategy for absorbing FDA staff cuts, according to Schaffner, but he noted that “it helps only up to a certain point.”

“The agency could sharpen its focus for risk-based inspection targeting,” he said.

That means prioritizing companies with the poorest past performance.

“This would result in reduced focus on the ‘good’ and/or low-risk facilities. Without regular visits from FDA to keep these companies on their toes, however, there may be some slippage which would not be detected by the agency as it was focused elsewhere,” he said.

Reviewing a company’s day-to-day operational records could be done remotely, but “it’s not a substitute for setting foot in the facility and walking around,” Schaffner noted.

Some of the review responsibilities could be passed on to states, but those programs still require federal oversight, Schaffner explained.

“It’s also important to realize that many states are already struggling to find individuals to fulfill contracts, so further cuts at the agency level will only make this problem worse,” he added.

The problem with ‘brain drain’

Brain drain, or the loss of institutional knowledge, at FDA is Schaffner’s biggest concern with mass layoffs.

Inspectors need about two or three years of training, which leads to the short-term problem of inspection frequency, he said.

The instability of sudden and far-reaching government cuts also serves as a deterrent to those interested in entering the field, he said.

“I worry today that young scientists who are seeking a stable and rewarding career are not considering government service,” he said. “Even if things were to go back to normal tomorrow, the loss in future capacity will take years to undo.”

FDA is losing its institutional memory, and there is no way to replace it quickly, he said.

“Dealing with complex problems requires someone with decades of experience, and there is no shortcut to gaining decades of experience, except to spend decades doing the work,” he said.