Federal agencies identified Listeria contamination in Boar charcuterie meats last year. Since Trump’s discounts to federal agencies, experts fear that inspectors cannot meet demand.
Lindsey Nicholson / UCG / Universal Images Group / Getty Images
hide
tilting legend
Lindsey Nicholson / UCG / Universal Images Group / Getty Images
Paula Soldner inspected meat and poultry plants in southern Wisconsin for 38 years: “I’m talking about kids, hot dogs, summer sausages, pizza.”
His work from the Ministry of Agriculture required Daily checks on factories to ensure that the slicers have been cleaned on time, for example. Its signaling allowed plants to put white and blue red stickers “inspected by the USDA on grocery plans.
Last month, Soldner took the Trump administration on his early retirement offer, joining an exodus of the food and inspection security service which began under the reorganization of the Biden of the agency last year. Soldner, who also chairs The national council of joint residents of the food inspection, says that remaining inspectors must now visit eight facilities – double the usual number – every day.
It is not possible, she says, so we do not know how much food legitimately wins this approval stamp.
“Did this factory have received this daily inspection of inspection staff? In my mind, it’s a huge question mark,” said Soldner.
She says that other personnel retreats, hostility to federal workers and the fall of morale create conditions that make consumers more vulnerable to epidemics of foods of food origin, such as Listeria’s deadly contamination This struck the Boar charcuterie meats last year, killing 10 people and hospitalizing dozens.
“Do I plan the situation of another wild boar? Absolutely,” she said. “I’m worried about the public.”
Experts who study the country’s food supply say that the safety of everything we eat – milk and macaroni to meat and lettuce – is questioned due to massive cuts By the Trump administration to the three federal agencies responsible for monitoring it: La Food and Drug Administration, the Ministry of Agriculture and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
These three agencies coordinate and finance a large part of the complex work which constitutes the country’s food safety monitoring system, while regulators and inspectors of the states and premises are carrying out a lot of work in the field.
Most products are inspected by states, for example, although some samples are sent to one of the FDA national laboratories to test pathogens like Salmonella or E.Coli. When a consumer falls ill, it is often local health officials who are first known, then report the cases to the CDC, who in turn traces contamination in sources and compiles the data.
“Our federal food security system is on the verge of collapse,” explains Sarah Sorscher, an expert in politics at the Science center in the public interest. It is most concerned about the loss of expertise in recent job cuts.
But it is also concerned about political movements such as the decline by the administration of the new USDA food security rules established last August which would have limited the quantity of salmonella in poultry to be sold. Instead, the agency said it was Revalle the problem And if Salmonella regulations need update.
In the declarations sent by email to NPR, the FDA and the USDA have declared that the recent rationalization of their operations will not change their commitment to food security. USDA announced on Tuesday that it has strengthened funds to reimburse states for food security inspections of $ 14.5 million.
In a separate e-mail statement, the USDA qualified the work of its “critical” inspector and said that the inspectors were therefore exempt from her job gelAnd his “front line and veterinarians did not have the opportunity to participate” in the agency’s second early retirement offer “due to the essential nature of their work”.
However, NPR examined the emails sent by USDA officials urging inspectors to retire early Treat and confirm their eligibility for this, as well as a list of eligible documents of job categories, including the consumer security inspector and slaughterhouses Inspectors.
Last month, the Trump administration suddenly closed two of the seven FDA food test laboratories in San Francisco and Chicago, according to several FDA staff who spoke under the cover of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The chaos that followed has delayed seafood inspections and routine product tests, FDA staff, including microbiologists working in different laboratories, told NPR. Lettuce or fruit samples had to be shipped in ice -packaged containers to redirect them to other laboratories, where a shortage of personnel and basic laboratory supplies such as Plastic pipettes and other test supplies, it is difficult to sort the workload.
This month, the administration has reopened the two laboratories, but is taking out, which leads regulatory affairs to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said that damage has been caused. “It’s as if you had taken a chainsaw and started cutting holes from the walls of a house,” she said. “You can’t really indicate the fact that the doors or windows are still there and say:” Don’t worry, the house is secure. “”
The CDC declared in a declaration sent by e-mail that its laboratory, monitoring and data collection work continues and that the agency “remains ready to respond and work with states on these epidemics”.
But many of the state programs and food security premises financed by the CDC are at risk, says Steven MandenachExecutive director of Association of food and drug managers. Budgets and staff have been reduced to the CDC, which affects how it supports local programs. The CDC, for example, has generally funded staff to inform the public in the event of epidemics, or to help eliminate dangerous products from the shelves, as they did with Lead -contaminated apple sauce sauce in 2023.
Manernach says that many states can no longer afford staff dedicated to public communications. He is therefore concerned about delayed warnings and less robust local monitoring of cases that would affect national data.
“It could make it look like artificially:” Hey, food security is great here “, when the reality is that we do not seek it as much,” he said.
