Currently browsing posts about: USDA

To me personally, the big news last week (besides my profile in the New York Times) is the announcement that the USDA plans to move its headquarters out of Washington, DC to three locations yet to be determined.

USDA is expected to offload one of its two Washington headquarters buildings, according to two employees familiar with the matter.

The relocations will accompany widespread layoffs at the department, according to four officials made aware of the plans, though the exact number is not yet clear. Those cuts are expected in late April or early May.

Some employees have been told to expect the department to cut back to fiscal 2019 staffing levels—which would lead to USDA slashing around 9,000 of its 98,000 employees—while others have been told there is a an overall federal workforce reduction number the administration has developed and the department will do its part proportionally to meet that target.

My translation: I haven’t been able to confirm this story, but what better way to get USDA employees to quit en masse.  This worked during Trump I to dismantle the Economic Research Service, a national treasure in my view.  I complained early and often about its transfer to Kansas.

As this article explains,

In 2019, the department relocated the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Kansas City, Mo., over the objections of employees and some lawmakers. Following the move, both agencies lost more than half of their staff, leading to a significant loss of productivity from which it took the agencies years to recover. Under President Biden, both agencies moved their headquarters back to Washington while maintaining their Kansas City offices.

I would say (and the Government Accountability Office agrees) the ERS has never recovered.  It still produces technical reports, but no longer publishes the kind of analytical pieces that I found so valuable to my work.

It’s fine to move government offices to the middle of the country.  Anything to help repopulate middle America is a good thing.

But this move has only one real purpose: to reduce staff.

This means reducing meat inspectors, and people who help participants use food assistance programs.  It means getting rid of agricultural and other USDA-supported researchers.  Basically, it means getting rid of anyone good enough to get another job without having to relocate.

Even without this, USDA staff are quitting in droves: USDA employees head for the doors as potential RIFs [reduction in forces] loom

Thousands of USDA employees are planning to leave the agency through a deferred resignation program that could challenge the department’s ability to fulfill critical functions such as food import and export inspections. According to one report, 16,000 USDA employees have opted for buyouts over two rounds.

I considered the transfer of the ERS to Kansas to be a national tragedy.  This is another one.

Thanks to Jim Krieger of Healthy Food America, for sending this one.

According to the Daily Beast: MAGA Influencers Caught Red-Handed Shilling for Big Soda

A string of MAGA influencers appear to have been caught taking money from Big Soda to undermine the government’s attempts to ban people from buying soda with food stamps.  Last week, a host of influential online pro-Trump personalities…raised eyebrows on X when they all appeared to abruptly change their views on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s push to pass legislation which would ban food-stamp recipients from spending their money on soft drinks and junk food….conservative journalist Nick Sortor posted an expose of the offending posts side-by-side on X, alongside claims they had been paid to adopt a pro-soda stance by a social media PR company named Influenceable….“Not a SINGLE ONE of them disclosed they were paid for these posts, which led readers to believe a general SODA BAN was in the works.”

According to The Daily Wire: Soda Lobby Group American Beverage Denies Paying Influencers To Fight SNAP Restrictions

In a statement sent to The Daily Wire on Tuesday, ABA President and CEO Kevin Keane further echoed the denial, saying it had conducted a “thorough vetting” and is “confident” that it was not involved in the effort.

Whew.  What is this about?

The issue of adding sugar-sweetened beverages to the short list of food items that cannot be bought with SNAP benefits (Alcohol, Cigarettes, prepared foods, medicines, supplements) is a difficult one, splitting some public health advocates from some anti-hunger advocates and forging unexpected political alliances.

RFK Jr’s MAHA movement wants sodas out of SNAP.  The MAHA arguments:

• Sodas contain sugars (lots) but no other nutrients.
• Drinking a lot of them correlates with poor health.
• SNAP recipients buy a lot of soda.
• SNAP benefit are not taxed, making the cost of sodas cheaper for them in some states.
• SNAP recipients could still buy sodas with their own (non-SNAP) money.
• The WIC program specifies which foods (all of them healthy) recipients can buy with their benefits; it works fine.

Arguments against:

• Poor people should be able to eat just as unhealthfully as everyone else.
• Blocking them from buying sodas is condescending.
• Doing this removes choice and is unfair.
• A ban will hurt the profits of the soda industry and retailers who sell sodas.

For years, public health advocates and some states have called for pilot projects (“waivers”) to see how removing sodas might work.  The USDA has always rejected such petitions.

I favor pilot projects, in part because of what I learned as a member of the SNAP to Health Commission, and also because of the letters I received after publication of Soda Politics.  SNAP recipients wrote me that they viewed their benefits as a license to buy junk food and would welcome restrictions.  They would not buy as much soda if they had to pay for it with non-SNAP funds.

The new USDA Secretary says she will agree to waivers.  Good.  Let’s try this and see how it works.

It’s not easy to figure out what’s happening on the food front in DC these days, but a lot of it does not sound good.  Here are a bunch from last week.

I.  Food Bank Support. USDA stops $500 million worth of shipments of food to food banks.

Food banks across the country are scrambling to make up a $500 million budget shortfall after the Trump administration froze funds for hundreds of shipments of produce, poultry and other items that states had planned to distribute to needy residents.

The Biden administration had slated the aid for distribution to food banks during the 2025 fiscal year through the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which is run by the Agriculture Department and backed by a federal fund known as the Commodity Credit Corporation. But in recent weeks, many food banks learned that the shipments they had expected to receive this spring had been suspended.

II.  Line speeds in meat processing plants.  USDA announces “streamlined” meat processing.  This is USDA-speak for increasing line speeds in processing plants, something terrifying to anyone who cares about worker safety and food safety.  As Food Safety News puts it, this is unsafe at any speed—again.

Once more, policymakers are making the same catastrophic mistake. Once more, industries are downplaying risk while lives hang in the balance. Once more, we are choosing efficiency over responsibility…It’s a reckless increase in processing speeds that threatens to overwhelm the very safeguards meant to protect both workers and consumers.

III.  Food safety rules.  FDA puts food safety rule on hold

In an announcement on March 20, the Food and Drug Administration said it intends to publish a proposed rule “at a later time.” The rule has already been published and approved and was set to go into effect Jan. 1, 2026. The rule was mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act, which Congress approved in 2010.

The food industry has been pushing back against the rule since before it was written, citing expenses. Industry groups applauded the FDA’s postponement of enforcement of the rule.

IV.  Seed Banks.  DOGE is trying to fire staff of the USDA’s National Plant Germplasm System, which stores 62,000 seed samples.

Comment

I’m not seeing much about Making America Healthy Again, beyond encouraging the elimination of artificial colors and trying to do something about the GRAS loophole, which lets companies essentially self-determine whether additives are safe.  Those are both worth doing, and have been a long time coming.  I still want to see this administration take strong action on:

• Ultra-processed food
• Food Safety
• School meals
• Support for small and medium farms

The cancelling of funding for the Diabetes Prevention Program, a 30-year longitudinal study, seems at odds with MAHA.  I hope the funding gets restored quicky.

USDA and HHS have announced an update on the dietary guidelines process.

A quick recap: The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee released its report last year.  The agencies are responsible for writing the actual guidelines, based on that report or not.

The USDA Secretary, Brooke Rollins, writes:

Secretary [of HHS] Kennedy and I have a powerful, complementary role in this, and it starts with updating federal dietary guidance. We will make certain the 2025-2030 Guidelines are based on sound science, not political science. Gone are the days where leftist ideologies guide public policy.”

Leftist ideologies?  She has to be kidding.  Since when did leftist ideologies influence the dietary guidelines?

Oh.  Wait.  Silly me.  I get it.  She means meat. 

Plant-based = leftist ideology.

You don’t believe me?  See Nina Teicholz’s editorial in the Wall Street Journal:  Meat will make America Healthy Again.

Ms. Rollins and Mr. Kennedy should reject suggestions from an expert committee that the 2025-30 federal guidelines place an even greater emphasis on plant-based proteins and that they recommend “reducing intakes of red and processed meats.” As the Agriculture Department found in 2010, there is either “no relationship” or a “limited inconsistent” relationship between any protein type and chronic diseases, including obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Protein, sure.  But meat?  Consistent evidence for years indicates that people in industrialized countries would be healthier eating less meat and more plants.  Less does not necessarily mean none; it means less than currently consumed and a lot less in some cases.

If USDA and HHS are serious about Making Americans Healthier Again, they will revise the Dietary Guidelines according to the science.  In my view, that means advising eating less of ultra-processed foods, as well as meat.

I was intrigued by this item from WattPoultry: Blame for high US egg prices is now a political pinataThe lack of understanding of basic economics is frustrating, but the misguided blame game over the cause of high egg prices presents an opportunity for change.  Read more

Everyone in the poultry industry knows that HPAI [Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza] caused laying hen losses and reduced the supply of eggs, and this is why retail egg prices, which have always been demand inelastic, have reached historic highs…The political “crisis” over egg prices can be used to open eyes and ears to new ideas on how best to deal with HPAI. We are over three years into the current outbreaks and the situation is arguably worse than it has ever been with the virus found in nearly 1,000 dairy herds, dozens of species of wild mammals and, of course, in all sorts of waterfowl and other wild bird species.

The article suggests the urgent need for more funding for:

• Research
• Vaccines
• Testing

These seem like minimal asks.  We need them all.

Here’s what the USDA is doing:  USDA invests up to $1 billion to combat avian flu and reduce egg prices.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued: Food Safety: Status of Foodborne Illness in the U.S.

This one sounds much like GAO reports I’ve been reading since the early 1990s.

We have long reported that the fragmented nature of the federal food safety oversight system causes inconsistent oversight, ineffective coordination, and inefficient use of resources. Since 2007, we have identified federal oversight of food safety as a high-risk issue and made several recommendations and matters for congressional consideration. In 2017, we called for the Executive Office of the President to develop and implement a national strategy for overseeing food safety. As of January 2025, there were no plans to create a national strategy, according to officials from the Office of Management and Budget.

What’s impressive about this report is its comprehensiveness.  If you want to understand why food safety in the U.S. remains a problem, this is the place to start.

Among other things, it’s got great graphics, like this one.

It makes several points, none for the first time.

Oversight of food safety is a mess; it needs consolidation.

At least 30 federal laws govern the safety and quality of the U.S. food supply, both domestic and imported. Collectively, 15 federal agencies administer these laws, including CDC, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), and HHS’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The federal food safety oversight system is supplemented by states, localities, Tribes, and territories, which may have their own laws and agencies to address the safety and quality of food.

The division of oversight responsibility between USDA (meat and poultry) and FDA (everything else) makes no sense.  It needs fixing.

Foodborne pathogens can be transmitted through multiple types of food and, therefore, can affect both FDA- and FSIS-regulated foods. For example, in 2024, two Salmonella outbreaks—one attributed to cucumbers, an FDA-regulated food, and one attributed to charcuterie meats, an FSIS-regulated food—collectively caused 650 confirmed illnesses and about 180 hospitalizations.

We keep trying and wish everyone would listen to us.

We previously reported on the need for a national strategy to guide federal efforts to address ongoing fragmentation and improve the federal food safety oversight system. This strategy could address our other previous matters for congressional consideration about a government-wide performance plan and sustained leadership for federal food safety. We maintain that such a strategy could create an opportunity to further strengthen federal oversight of the nation’s food supply and reduce the economic and public health effects of foodborne illness.

Food Safety News reports that the FDA says

the biggest stumbling block to conducting inspections of food facilities is understaffing…The annual target for FDA inspections is 19,200, according to the report. The most annual inspections of foreign food facilities occurred in 2019, with 1,727 inspections, or 9 percent of the annual target… in July 2024, FDA had a total of 432 investigators — 90 percent of the full-time equivalent ceiling — for conducting both domestic and foreign inspections, according to FDA officials.

Comment

The instructions to the MAHA Commission (see yesterday’s post) say nothing about food safety beyond its being a matter requiring fresh thinking. Food safety does not appear to be a MAHA priority, especially in light of the threatened mass firings of FDA staff.  Reducing the number of FDA inspectors is unlikely to help at this point.  I hope the Commission adds safe food to its agenda.  The GAO has called for a single food safety agency for decades.  This might be just the time to take that on.  Fresh thinking indeed!

OOPS: A reader alerted me that all links have been taken down by the new administration.

In his last weeks in office, former President Biden issued a Fact Sheet on the food system investments achieved by his administration. A reader, Ethan Wolf, sent in a link from the Wayback Machine. Fact Sheet on the food system investments achieved by his administration

The Fact Sheet divides the achievements into several categories.

• Building new markets and income for farmers and ranchers
• Modernizing the middle of the agriculture and food supply chain: food processing, aggregation, and distribution
• Creating more fair and competitive markets
• Improving food access, nutrition security and health
• Enchancing food safety
• Supporting breakthrough agricultural rewearch and innovation

To highlight just one—food safety:

• USDA issued a rule to classify raw poultry products contaminated with specific Salmonella levels and serotypes as adulterated.
• USDA also finalized a rule declaring Salmonella an adulterant in raw breaded stuffed chicken products exceeding 1 colony-forming unit per gram.
• FDA launched the “Closer to Zero” initiative (C2Z), which sets forth a science-based approach to continually reducing exposure to lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury to the lowest levels possible in foods eaten by babies and young children.
• FDA has issued numerous action levels for toxic elements: draft levels for lead in juices; final levels for lead in foods intended for babies and young children; and a final level for arsenic in apple juice. 
• FDA revoked authorizations for the uses of brominated vegetable oil (BVO) in food because of the potential for adverse health effects in humans.
• FDA also revised its regulations and revoked prior-sanctioned uses of partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs) because studies consistently link consumption of PHOs (industrially produced trans fat) with heart disease. 
• Before the end of the term, FDA also plans to revoke the authorization of Red No. 3, a red dye used in certain medications and various foods and beverages, including candies, cakes, frostings, and frozen desserts, due to studies showing that the dye caused cancer [it did this].

Perhaps coincidentally, Lisa Held at Civil Eats published How Four Years of Biden Reshaped Food and Farming: From day one, the administration prioritized climate, “nutrition security,” infrastructure investments, and reducing food system consolidation. Here’s what the president and his team actually did.

Her categories are somewhat different:

• Taking on Consolidation and Corporate Power, and Supporting Farmer Livelihood
• Tackling the Climate Crisis
• Regulating Pesticides and Other Chemicals
• Focusing on Food Safety
• Linking Hunger, Nutrition, and Health
• Supporting Food and Farm Workers
• Advancing Equity

Here’s my excerpted summary of her analysis of Taking on Corporate Power.

Let’s start the new year off with a classic industry-funded study with predictable results.

Beef Consumption and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.  Sanders, Lisa M et al. Current Developments in Nutrition, Volume 8, Issue 12, 104500

Background: Results from observational studies suggest associations of red meat intake with increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD); however, RCTs have not clearly demonstrated a link between red meat consumption and CVD risk factors. Further, the specific effects of beef, the most consumed red meat in the United States, have not been extensively investigated.

Objectives: This study aimed to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of RCT data evaluating the effects of minimally or unprocessed beef intake on CVD risk factors in adults.

Methods: A search of the literature was conducted using PubMed and CENTRAL databases.

Results: Beef intake did not impact blood pressure or most lipoprotein-related variables, including total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, triglycerides, non–HDL-cholesterol, apolipoprotein A or B, and VLDL-cholesterol. Beef consumption had a small but significant effect on LDL-cholesterol (0.11; 95% CI: 0.008, 0.20; P = 0.03), corresponding to ∼2.7 mg/dL higher LDL-cholesterol in diets containing more beef than that in low-beef or -o beef comparator diets. Sensitivity analyses show this effect was lost when 1 influential study was removed.

Conclusions: In summary, the results of this analysis showed no meaningful effect of daily unprocessed beef intake, compared with diets with less or no beef, on circulating lipoprotein lipids, apolipoproteins, and blood pressures, except for a small effect to increase the LDL-cholesterol concentration by ∼2.7 mg/dL. Given that unprocessed beef has minimal to no impact on these CVD risk factors but is a significant source of highly bioavailable protein as well as iron, zinc, and selenium, its inclusion in the diet may help improve dietary nutrient profiles without significantly affecting lipids or blood pressures.

Funding: This study was supported by the Beef Checkoff. The funding sponsor provided comments on early aspects of the study design. A report was shared with the sponsor prior to submission. The final decision for all aspects of the study and the manuscript content were those of the authors alone.

Comment:  As I said, an instant classic of the genre.  The USDA-managed Beef Checkoff had input into the study design and got to comment on the results and conclusions before the article was submitted for publication.  The sponsor exerted influence at the two places bias is most often found: the study design and the interpretation of the results.  Hence, industry influenced and predictable.

More to come.  Happy new year!