The Trump administration’s employees cuts hit the Division of Well being and Human Providers on the finish of final week, impacting companies that do meals system work, particularly the Meals & Drug Administration (FDA). In line with The Guardian, 5,200 “probationary” staff had been reduce throughout the bigger company, together with members of FDA’s employees engaged on the security of meals components. Because the cuts got here down, Jim Jones, the director of the FDA’s meals division, resigned.
Jones was introduced in from the EPA in 2023 to supervise a restructuring of FDA’s food programs supposed to prioritize meals security and elevate work on vitamin and diet-related illness. In his resignation letter, he mentioned had been trying ahead to working with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose stated goals aligned with these priorities. However he famous he was upset by each the indiscriminate nature of layoffs and accusations that present employees had been corrupt. He mentioned 89 folks on his workforce had been fired, together with these engaged on the security of chemical compounds in meals, and that it could be fruitless to attempt to proceed the work.
Advocacy teams together with the Heart for Science within the Public Curiosity (CSPI) said the cuts would undermine meals security. “Should you go into surgical procedure with a hatchet as a substitute of a scalpel, the result’s carnage,” mentioned CSPI President Peter Lurie, M.D. Quite the opposite, at a Politico Dwell occasion on Wednesday morning, Kennedy ally Del Bigtree, the founding father of MAHA Action, mentioned that he wasn’t certain if Kennedy was driving the cuts however that it’s seemingly the federal government is spending an excessive amount of cash on staff who aren’t enhancing the well being of the nation. “I can’t think about what 80,000 staff are wanted for relating to well being,” he mentioned.
The FDA didn’t reply to a request for remark. White Home Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Bloomberg that the cuts had been a part of President Trump’s mandate to solely make use of “one of the best and most certified people who find themselves additionally keen to implement his America First Agenda on behalf of the American folks.” (Link to this post.)
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