FDA Used To Screen For 8 Foodborne Pathogens. Now They Screen For 2, W. Inspection Rates Collapsing

[hatrack]

Wow, these disgruntled FDA employees are really working hard to weaponize their "expertise" to make Our Favorite President look bad!!!!



EDIT

Less than a year after Donald Trump returned to power, and his administration oversaw the firing and resignation of thousands of FDA employees, a listeria outbreak that killed six people and sickened 27 across 18 states due to contamination of prepared pasta meals underlined the danger posed by safety failings. “Those kinds of things are going to keep coming,” said David Harbourt, a former veterinary safety manager at the FDA, who was fired last year. The agency’s work “has been compromised for at a minimum, the short term, hopefully not the long term”, he claimed. “But it’s those aspects of American people’s lives that we almost take for granted that are going to be affected in a very negative way in the coming years.”

About 19,700 employees worked at the agency before Trump officials introduced waves of firings, voluntary retirement and resignation programs. Thousands subsequently left, although some workers were later rehired. “I am concerned that by letting go so many people, by offering early retirement, it’s like that kids’ game Jenga where you pile up all these wooden pieces,” said Sandra Eskin, CEO of Stop Foodborne Illness, a non-profit, and former deputy under secretary for food safety at the US Department of Agriculture. “And if you pull one out from the bottom or even the middle, the whole thing falls apart. The FDA “does not have a robust inspection program for the foods that it regulates”, she said. “And so if that’s your baseline, and then you’re cutting back inspectors, then that is very concerning.”

Foreign food inspections by the FDA have dropped to the lowest on record since the agency began inspecting foreign food facilities in 2011, aside from during the Covid-19 pandemic. Domestic inspections also steeply declined.

Due to cuts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which works with the FDA and other agencies to conduct surveillance for food pathogens, reduced the number of pathogens they surveil through its Foodnet surveillance program from eight to two.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/13/fda-employees-food-safety-warning

[hlthe2b]

1. Well, be careful where you purchase, how you cook and how you handle and hope to hell

that MAGATs become the first line "canaries" in the coal mine, so-to-speak.

That said, you can't do much to protect against pre-formed bacterial toxins, like Staph aureus and Clostridium botulinum, Bacillus cereus (caution leaving rice out, including long time in rice cooker/warming setting or re-heating)

It is unbelievable that all the progress we have made in public health to address vaccine-preventable diseases and preventable food/water poisonings are now a thing of the past. Likewise air pollution and toxin contaminants.