The FDA Buried an E. Coli Outbreak. Now It’s Scaling Back Food Safety
The Department of Health and Human Services was by no means spared the hatchet job by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE), and big changes are coming to food safety standards and communications over public health risks — and not in a good way.
According to a Thursday report from NBC News, in February the Food and Drug Administration — a subsidiary of HHS — quietly closed an investigation into a multi-state E. Coli outbreak that killed one person and sickened dozens in November. An internal report obtained by NBC showed that the FDA engaged in “no public communications related to this outbreak.” The internal report did not name the suppliers and distributors involved in the sale of the contaminated produce, which caused infections across 15 states. In short, the outbreak would have remained out of the public record had it not been obtained by NBC — a stark reversal from recent transparency efforts implemented
Hours after NBC’s report dropped, CBS News released their own reporting indicating that the Food and Drug Administration is planning to end most of their food inspection and safety operations, and transfer those functions to individual state agencies. A spokesperson for the FDA denied the report.
The FDA already contracts out a significant amount of inspection work on low-risk food categories, and it’s not the first time shifting food-safety enforcement responsibility to the states has been a topic of discussion within HHS. But the talk of ending routine safety inspections is enough to raise concerns among consumers when the administration is also quietly shelving a report on a deadly E. Coli outbreak and discussing ending routine safety inspections weeks after firing thousands of its employees. Earlier this month, the FDA also announced that it would be suspending quality control programs at food testing laboratories, citing the recent reduction in staff as the primary cause of the cutback. .
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Food safety is not the only imperilled function of the FDA. Known vaccine conspiracy theorist and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made the FDA a prime target of his crackpot reforms at HHS. In his few months at the helm, the health systems under Kennedy’s control have yanked funding for influenza vaccine promotion, made moves to remove fluoride from drinking water, canceled critical vaccine development planning meetings, and bungled the federal response to a deadly measles outbreak in Texas.
Americans are at the precipice of major institutional changes that could make them less healthy, less safe, and eliminate accountability for companies pushing unsafe products into the marketplace. The gutting of services and protections isn’t limited to the Department of Health and Human Services. The mass firings of federal employees across all sectors of the government will affect everything from Social Security, to education, to even the daily weather report. According to a Thursday report from The Los Angeles Times, forced layoffs at the National Weather Service are decimating meteorologists’ ability to gather data and produce timely, accurate forecasts.
“The cracks are really now starting to show,” one climate scientist told the Times.