The top official in charge of food safety and nutrition at the Food and Drug Administration resigned this week, protesting the dozens of scientists and other health officials now being let go across the agency’s foods program.
In his resignation letter, James Jones warned that the “indiscriminate” cuts would add “one more roadblock” to the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda outlined by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“They included staff with highly technical expertise in nutrition, infant formula, food safety response and even 10 chemical safety staff hired to review potentially unsafe ingredients in our food supply,” Jones wrote in his letter, which was dated Feb. 17.
Jones said that at least 89 of his recently hired staff had been cut across the agency’s human foods program. News of the resignation was previously reported by the food industry publication Food Fix.
FDA
Dozens of other staff have been cut across other parts of the FDA, multiple agency employees told CBS News, because of the sweeping cost-cutting moves by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, task force. Firings at the FDA affected a range of teams, including those overseeing tobacco products to medical devices, officials said.
Many firings came without warning to their supervisors within the agency, officials said, with letters emailed directly to staff by human resources officials outside the FDA. Some were later walked back for employees that Trump administration officials felt needed to be exempted.
The total number of staff cut at the FDA is unclear. An agency spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jones had come into his role at the FDA as part of a major shakeup in recent years to the agency’s food safety work.
One major initiative spearheaded by Jones, a former top regulatory official at the Environmental Protection Agency, had been an effort to systematically start reviewing whether some of the additives previously greenlighted for use in food should still be considered safe.
Under the program, the FDA moved to ban the color additive Red 3 for causing cancer in some laboratory animals. Advocates had hoped the program would also lead to renewed scrutiny of other artificial dyes, like Red 40, which had been lambasted by Kennedy.
He also oversaw a proposal in the final weeks of the Biden administration to push for nutrition labels on the front of packages, as a way to push Americans and food manufacturers towards healthier options on store shelves.
Some officials within the agency had hoped that Jones would be able to find common ground with the incoming team under Kennedy, who is weighing major changes to how food additives are regulated and has decried health officials for not doing enough to curb unhealthy foods.
At a town hall with FDA employees this month, Jones had told his staff that he was ready to work with Kennedy. That changed after the firings, which Jones called “short sighted” and “indiscriminate.”
“It has been increasingly clear that with the Trump Administration’s disdain for the very people necessary to implement your agenda, however, it would have been fruitless for me to continue in this role,” Jones wrote in his letter.
Kennedy had said in the run-up to the election that he wanted to fire all of the food and nutrition staff at the FDA and other federal agencies, saying they had been corrupted by conflicts of interest from corporations. In his letter, Jones rebuked Kennedy’s attacks on his staff as unfounded.
“The foods program staff at FDA is the envy of the world in its technical, professional and ethical standards,” Jones said.
Under the Biden administration, FDA officials Congress and the courts for hampering efforts by public health authorities to crack down on unhealthy and unsafe food, saying more resources were needed and a range of legal hurdles limited their authority.
