A series of food recalls this summer have left a bad taste in Americans’ minds, and public health experts warn that cuts to key food safety workers could mean more foodborne illnesses are on the way.
In July, Taylor Farms de Mexico I have recalled all iceberg lettuce sourced from 27 states following a Cyclospora outbreak in Mexico 18,445 people fell ill since the beginning of May. That’s in addition to Taylor Farms I remember fresh jalapenos in 26 states due to salmonella concerns. A Food and Drug Administration report In July, the company announced that Dairy Queen locations in five states had removed 74 cases of ice cream after metal shavings were found in the product. Don’t forget the more than 75,000 packages of tofu recalled because it may contain ink.
The apparent increase in food-related recalls coincided with massive cuts conducted by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), including at the FDA, the US Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The U.S. government has struggled with food safety staffing issues and limited resources for decades. But after the DOGE cuts, these key agencies’ jobs in preventing the spread of foodborne illness will only become more difficult, experts say.
“None of this is good for food safety,” said Don Schaffner, chair of the food science department at Rutgers University Assets. “I’m really more concerned that we’re losing track of what’s going on. We already know that a significant number of illnesses are going unreported and a significant number of outbreaks are going undetected. This is just going to make things worse.”
He added: “None of this is efficiency. This is everything, whatever the opposite of efficiency is.”
DOGE concerns food safety
According to the Office of Human Resources Management DataAs of 2024, there are more than 1,100 fewer Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) positions in the USDA.
“Food safety remains a top priority,” a USDA spokesperson said Assets in a statement. “Inspectors and frontline workers provide mandatory inspection coverage every day at every federally regulated facility, and that will not change. No FSIS-regulated products can enter commerce without an inspection.”
At the Department of Health and Human Services, the FDA shifted its focus to preventing rather than responding to food safety crises Food Safety Modernization Act from 2011.
But more recently, DOGE has limited its monitoring and tracking capabilities. In addition to cutting its own workforce, the FDA is conducting fewer inspections of imported foods 20% of the US food supply. According to a Assets Agency analysis Data Compared to fiscal year 2024, when FDA conducted 805 inspections, fiscal year 2025 saw 723 inspections, and fiscal year 2026 saw a further downward trend with 214 inspections in the first two quarters of the year.
The reduction correlates with the Elimination of FDA support staff rolesor personnel who booked travel and conducted food testing for contamination, resulting in an administrative delay in efficiently completing key safety and inspection protocols.
In August 2025 also health and social services downsized the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Networkknown as FoodNet, which tracks cases of food poisoning and dramatically reduces mandatory monitoring of six major germs, including Cyclospora.
The FDA announced Assets It said the Trump administration is working closely with health authorities in all 50 states to respond to outbreaks and that no FDA investigators will be affected by staffing changes or reductions.
The year 2027 of the FDA proposed budget is $7.2 billion, a 3.3% increase over the 2026 budget, and the agency is placing great emphasis on expanding its inspection capacity.
The agency also noted this in a recent report Social media post that food recalls have actually declined in recent years, with 2,182 in fiscal 2024 and 2,160 in fiscal 2025, compared to 1,836 so far in fiscal 2026, which ends Sept. 30.
Pre-existing food safety issues
But even before the DOGE cuts, food controls in the USA were falling short of recommendations. A Government Accountability Office in 2025 report found that “FDA has not met its domestic and foreign inspection goals since fiscal year 2018” and did not inspect 7% of domestic high-risk facilities scheduled for inspection in fiscal year 2019, a number that increased dramatically to 40% in 2020 and 49% in 2021.
The agency, which is responsible for 80% of the country’s food supply, cited labor shortages as the main reason for the shortcomings in inspections.
The GAO published a similar document analysis In 2009, the FDA identified food safety as a major reason for the FDA’s deficiencies, reflecting a scientific panel report was published two years earlier and had already highlighted staffing shortages decades earlier.
“They had to do more and more with less and less,” said Marion Nestle, professor emeritus of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University Assets.
She attributed the ongoing staffing problem in part to the way congressional appropriations committees fund the FDA and said money earmarked for rural development and agricultural efforts is leaving funding for food and drug regulation by the wayside.
Which made DOGE even worse
Nestle warned that while the U.S. government has always been skimpy on inspection resources, fewer inspections after the DOGE cuts are changing the psychology behind how companies enforce food safety, citing a trend in human health less fear of familiar risks like food contamination.
“If the companies are not inspected, if no one is running the store, if no one is holding them accountable, they become sloppy,” she said.
Food safety is ultimately in the hands of the industry, not the government, Schaffner said. But DOGE has made it harder for researchers and academics to proactively study germs that can threaten people’s health.
For example the USDA plans to close the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland and relocate its programs to different facilities. The research center includes two parasitology laboratories that research and coordinate research on Cyclospora.
Schaffner said scientists are unlikely to give up their lives and move to another research facility, especially during times of uncertainty, and further disruptions could affect research for years.
“This is probably a time when we want to know more about Cyclospora incidents in general, not less,” he said. “And in hindsight, that seems like a completely stupid decision.”