And kudos to my co-reporter @bxroberts.org who is masterful at understanding the complexity of federal data sets! 📊

We are still reporting and need your help.

Do you know anything about how the current administration is approaching food safety? We want to talk to:

*Current/former federal workers (from FDA, USDA and CDC)
*Food safety experts
*Industry professionals

Find me on Signal (347-549-0332) or email me 📩

But current and former FDA employees, as well as food safety experts said, these cuts and actions are undermining public health.

"It's only a matter of time before people die," said one expert.

HHS, FDA and the White House refused to respond to any of ProPublica’s questions about the decrease in foreign food inspections or other recent actions.

"Responding to ProPublica is not considered a mission-critical activity," said HHS press secretary, citing the government shutdown.

Then the administration quietly scaled back the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, also known as FoodNet, shrinking its surveillance to just two pathogens: Salmonella and a common type of E. coli.

The program was previously responsible for monitoring eight foodborne illnesses.

The next month, a quality control program that ensured consistency and accuracy across its 170 pathogen and contaminant labs was suspended as a result of staffing cuts.

www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...

The gutting of the workforce coincides with other actions the administration has taken that are poking holes in the nation's food safety net.

In March, the FDA announced it was delaying compliance with a rule to speed up the identification and removal of harmful products in the food system:

These support staff cuts have incapacitated foreign inspections, as new burdens have shifted to investigators, current and former FDA staffers said.

As morale has collapsed across the FDA, many senior investigative officials with decades of experience also chose to resign or retire.

About two dozen current and former FDA officials blamed the pullback on deep staffing cuts under the Trump administration.

Inspections declined early on, after 65% of the staff in divisions responsible for coordinating travel and budgets were fired or left.

projects.propublica.org/federal-heal...

And in recent years, FDA investigators have uncovered numerous safety violations at foreign food facilities:
*Crawling insects.
*Pipes dripping into water tanks.
*Workers hauling dough in soiled buckets.
*Cracked conveyor belts.
*Fake testing data purporting to show food products were pathogen free.

Why does this matter?

*Nearly all seafood, ~60% of fresh fruit and ~40% of veggies are imported.

*Research shows imported food has been increasingly linked to outbreaks.

*Foodborne illnesses (i.e.🦠 listeria, e. coli, salmonella🦠) can cause severe illness and death.

www.fda.gov/food/consume...

We crunched the federal data and found the US is on track to have the *fewest inspections since 2011* (excluding pandemic years).

In recent years, the FDA has typically been able to conduct ~110 foreign food inspections each month, but in March, the number of inspections dropped almost in half.

Thanks for flagging for this!

The world we live in 🙃