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The safety of everything we eat, from milk and macaroni to meat and lettuce, is monitored by three federal agencies - the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. All have faced deep cuts, even before the Trump administration's reductions. NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: Paula Soldner's inspected meat and poultry plants around southern Wisconsin for 38 years. It required daily checkups on factories to ensure slicers were cleaned on schedule, for example. Her sign-off allowed plants to put red, white and blue USDA-inspected labels on grocery store packages.
PAULA SOLDNER: I'm talking brats, hot dogs, summer sausage, pizzas.
NOGUCHI: Last month, Soldner took the Trump administration up on its offer of early retirement, joining an exodus from the Food Safety and Inspection Service that began under President Biden. Soldner says remaining inspectors must now visit eight facilities - double the usual number - each day. That's not possible, she says, so it's unclear how much food is legitimately earning that stamp of approval.
SOLDNER: As long as that stamp is there, yeah, it can be sold. But did that plant receive that daily inspection from inspection personnel? In my mind, that's a huge question mark.
NOGUCHI: Soldner chairs her union. The National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals represents some 6,500 inspectors like her. She says consumers today are more vulnerable to deadly listeria outbreaks like last year's, traced to an unsanitary factory run by Boar's Head.
SOLDNER: Do I foresee another Boar's Head situation? Absolutely. Absolutely. I worry about the public.
NOGUCHI: The country's food safety system is complex. Federal agencies coordinate and fund most food safety programs, while state and local officials do a lot of work on the ground. Most produce is inspected by states, for example, but the FDA's national labs test samples for pathogens. Often, it's local health officials who first report food-borne illness cases to the CDC.
In emails, FDA and USDA spokesmen said streamlining operations will not alter commitment to food safety. The USDA yesterday said it boosted state funds for food safety inspections by $14 1/2 million. In a separate emailed statement, the agency called inspectors, quote, "critical," and therefore, none were eligible for the administration's second early retirement offer. NPR reviewed emails, however, of USDA officials urging inspectors to take that deal, then confirming some qualified. Meanwhile, Sarah Sorscher, a policy expert at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says the entire system is unraveling.
SARAH SORSCHER: Our federal food safety system is teetering on the brink of a collapse.
NOGUCHI: She's most concerned about the loss of expertise. The Trump administration last month abruptly shuttered two of the FDA's seven food testing labs, for example. The ensuing chaos delayed seafood inspections and routine produce testing, several FDA microbiologists told me. This month, the administration reopened the two labs, but Sorscher says damage has been done.
SORSCHER: It's as if you took a chainsaw and started cutting holes out of the walls of a house. You can't really point to the fact that the doors or windows are still there and say, don't worry, the house is secure.
NOGUCHI: Steven Mandernach, director of the Association of Food and Drug Officials, says state and local officials also lost CDC funding for public outreach. He says that will delay response and tracking of outbreaks.
STEVEN MANDERNACH: It could artificially make it look like, hey, food safety is great here, when the actuality is we just aren't looking for it as much.
NOGUCHI: He says we'd simply be less aware of the dangers. Yuki Noguchi, NPR News.
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