Former FDA officials alarmed by agency firings

Staffing cuts affecting thousands of employees at the Food and Drug Administration could endanger the agency's ability to protect Americans’ health, according to former top FDA officials and some public health experts.  

The Department of Health and Human Services announced plans last week to lay off about 10,000 employees and downsize the agency by 20,000. The plans include reducing staff at FDA by 3,500, and employees began receiving their reduction-in-force notices Monday night.

FDA regulates 80% of the nation's food supply as well as drugs and medical devices. 

Reaction to the layoffs came swiftly from former FDA officials, including recently departed Commissioner Robert Califf, who said the agency was losing critical personnel.

"I believe that history will see this a huge mistake. I will be glad if I'm proven wrong, but even then there is no good reason to treat people this way,” Califf wrote on LinkedIn.

FDA’s leader during the first Trump administration, Scott Gottlieb, said development of drugs to treat rare diseases could be delayed. He said at a Politico event Wednesday the staffing decisions seemed to have been determined by a "very small group of mostly political leadership inside the office of the commissioner." He said the cuts don't reflect a full understanding of how various offices and teams work.

Frank Yiannas, who served as deputy commissioner for food policy and response from 2018 to 2023, a period spanning both the Biden and first Trump administrations, also expressed concern.

"We'll have to see where the cuts were made and what individuals were let go. But I have to believe, based on my experience at the agency, that these cuts are going to be deep enough that they're going to hurt the way the agency works," said Yiannas.

Multiple sources have said the staff in the director’s office at the Center of Veterinary Medicine has been let go, as has CVM’s Office of Management. Most, if not all, of the communications staff is gone. Hundreds of people in the Human Foods Program are out.

When Kennedy announced the RIF plans last week, he said food safety inspectors were safe. Yiannas, however, said even if they aren’t let go, it will be difficult for FDA to continue modernizing its food safety system without adequate support staff.

FDA’s Office of Inspections and Investigations lab in San Francisco has been hit hard, according to news reports and Reddit postings from current and former employees.

Yiannas said he’s heard several employees tied to food program communications were let go, which could become an issue when it comes to communicating foodborne illness outbreaks or food safety information to the public and industry stakeholders. 

Yiannas said the early information he’d received is that cuts were consistent with what HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had previously said about eliminating duplicative efforts and consolidating services such as human resources.

On its face, he said he could understand how having an HR office for every division may seem duplicative. However, consolidating those functions could result in a slowdown in services.

"I think that this approach seems easy – you just go through and cut," said Sandra Eskin, a former deputy undersecretary at USDA who now leads Stop Foodborne Illness. "But the results could be a significant impact on public health.”

Like others Agri-Pulse spoke with, Eskin said she’s still sorting through the fallout of the RIF, but called the cuts significant.

“Consumers overwhelmingly support the government ensuring the safety of the food supply,” Eskin said. “It is an essential function of government in the same way that government has an army to protect us against foreign threats.”

Eskin said having a comprehensive, effective food safety agency requires lots of leaders and people. This ranges from the staff needed to develop policies and the regulations, field inspectors and those who connect with stakeholders. 

“It’s incredibly shortsighted, and I think incredibly damaging,” Eskin said of the RIFs. 

She said FDA has tried in recent years to focus more on prevention when it comes to outbreaks of foodborne illnesses. But without enough staff, the agency could go back to a reactive mode. 

Some observers were skeptical that the stated goals of the downsizing can be achieved. 

In its fact sheet laying out the RIFs, HHS said "the consolidation and cuts are designed not only to save money, but to make the organization more efficient and more responsive to Americans’ needs, and to implement the Make America Healthy Again goal of ending the chronic disease epidemic." "How, pray tell," nutritionist Marion Nestle asked on her Food Politics blog.

In 2024, there were several high-profile foodborne illness outbreaks, including those tied to Boar’s Head, McDonald’s and fresh produce products. Eskin said these hurt consumer confidence in food safety. 

This is an issue the Make America Healthy Again movement could run into as it pushes fresh produce consumption as part of healthier diets. 

“If you hear persistent outbreaks linked to these fresh products that we don’t cook … you’re not going to be incentivized to eat them,” Eskin said. 

There are some defenders of the RIF. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., was briefed on the cuts before the initial announcement. He told Agri-Pulse  on Tuesday the agency is still preserving "mission-critical positions."

"I think at the end of the day, the CDC, HHS will be much better and much more efficient," Marshall said. 

But on the other side of Capitol Hill, Rep. Rose DeLauro, ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, said staff tasked with ensuring food and drugs are safe were fired.  

"They fired scientists who are working on cures and treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and other debilitating diseases," DeLauro said. "They fired experts who are helping to combat the opioid and substance use crisis."

The American Veterinary Medical Association released a statement also expressing alarm.

Citing cutbacks not just at FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine but also at the CDC and National Institutes of Health,  AVMA President Sandra Faeh said the organization "supports efforts to thoughtfully improve government efficiency; however, as the work is done to achieve that, essential functions must be preserved.

"The offices impacted by this recent reduction-in-force work on issues such as drug availability, antimicrobial resistance, animal and human food safety, disease control (including, but not limited to, avian influenza), international trade, and much more," she said. "The work done by our veterinarian colleagues in these offices is critical to the safe and effective practice of veterinary medicine, and – ultimately – the protection of animal and public health. The situation is fluid right now, and we want to work with Congress and the administration to ensure that key positions and personnel are restored and that the many critical and essential functions of these federal offices, which protect the health of both humans and animals, are maintained."

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