New safeguards related to food safety were poised to take effect in January 2026, but as The New York Times reported, that’s apparently no longer going to happen.
The Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday that it would delay by 30 months a requirement that food companies and grocers rapidly trace contaminated food through the supply chain and pull it off the shelves. Intended to ‘limit food-borne illness and death,’ the rule required companies and individuals to maintain better records to identify where foods are grown, packed, processed or manufactured.
The Times quoted Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports, saying, “This decision is extremely disappointing and puts consumers at risk of getting sick from unsafe food because a small segment of the industry pushed for delay, despite having 15 years to prepare.”
Sarah Sorscher, director of regulatory affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, added, “This is a huge step backward for food safety.”
Making matters worse is that it’s not the only step backward for food safety that the Trump administration has taken lately.
The day before the Times published the aforementioned report, the newspaper ran a related article that noted, “At the Food and Drug Administration, freezes on government credit card spending ordered by the Trump administration have impeded staff members from buying food to perform routine tests for deadly bacteria. In states, a $34 million cut by the F.D.A. could reduce the number of employees who ensure that tainted products — like tin pouches of lead-laden applesauce sold in 2023 — are tested in labs and taken off store shelves.”
The same article went on to note that at Trump’s Agriculture Department, “a committee studying deadly bacteria was recently disbanded, even as it was developing advice on how to better target pathogens that can shut down the kidneys. Committee members were also devising an education plan for new parents on bacteria that can live in powdered infant formula.”
This came on the heels of multiple reports that the Trump administration disbanded two federal committees tasked with advising policymakers on food safety, the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods and the National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection.
Alas, the list keeps going. The Times also reported that the administration has “slowed or stopped some testing of grocery items for hazardous bacteria and monitoring of shellfish and food packaging for PFAS, chemicals linked to cancer and reproductive harm.”
What’s more, the Department of Health and Human Services recently sent out emails asking most of its workforce to consider an offer to quit their jobs in exchange for $25,000. The list included food inspection workers at the FDA — of which there are already too few. And did I mention that the administration appointed Donald Trump Jr.’s hunting buddy to lead the FDA’s Human Foods Program, overseeing all nutrition and food safety activities? Because that happened, too. There is some good news, however: These developments should only matter to Americans who eat food. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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