According to the Associated Press (AP), after thousands of employees at federal public health agencies were fired the week prior, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is asking some staffers to return, including at least ten people who are responsible for reviewing the safety of food ingredients.
FDA did not officially respond to requests about how many employees were being reinstated, but anonymous inside sources told Reuters the agency plans to rehire approximately 300 people responsible for reviewing drugs, food safety, medical devices, and tobacco. Reuters could not verify the figure, but was told by the White House that the presidential administration originally fired more than 1,000 FDA staffers.
According to AP, because the firings affected probationary employees who had not yet qualified for civil service protections, the layoffs inadvertently slashed key areas for which FDA had been working to increase manpower in the last few years. For example, FDA’s Human Foods Program was officially established in October 2024, following a large-scale restructuring of FDA’s foods departments to increase the agency’s effectiveness. James (Jim) Jones, a previous chemical regulator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), was hired to be the first Deputy Commissioner for the new Human Foods Program, and had placed special focus on food chemical safety. Mr. Jones resigned from his position at FDA on February 17, citing 89 “indiscriminate” layoffs, including employees with “highly technical expertise in nutrition, infant formula, and food safety response,” as the reason for his resignation. (Mr. Jones' replacement is rumored to be attorney Kyle Diamantas, J.D.).
Although some Human Foods Program staffers are being rehired, AP reported that the re-hirings are likely motivated by pushback from the medical device industry and therefore mostly affect medical product reviewers. The medical device industry paid more than $791 million to the agency in fees in the last fiscal year, in return for FDA’s efficient review of applications for medical devices. Nearly half of FDA’s budget is funded by drug, medical, and tobacco industry fees, per AP. But cuts to FDA’s Human Foods Program Staff did not go uncriticized or unnoticed, either, with major public health, food industry, and consumer protection groups speaking out against the firings, expressing that the layoffs could jeopardize food safety and contradict the goals of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” goals.
USDA Reverses Layoffs of Employees Responsible for Bird Flu Response
Additionally, at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which also initiated aggressive layoffs following the confirmation of new Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, the agency is working to “swiftly” reverse firings of employees responsible for avian influenza response, reported NBC News. As the ongoing Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1 (HPAI H5N1) outbreak continues to sweep U.S. poultry flocks and dairy herds, a USDA spokesperson told NBC News that the agency is still prioritizing its response to the outbreak.
"Although several positions supporting [bird flu efforts] were notified of their terminations over the weekend, we are working to swiftly rectify the situation and rescind those letters," the statement said. "USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) frontline positions are considered public safety positions, and we are continuing to hire the workforce necessary to ensure the safety and adequate supply of food to fulfill our statutory mission."
