PLEASE MAKE OUR FOOD SAFE AGAIN!

The Trump Administration’s policies and cuts have made our food less safe, just like their policies about clean water and air. The Trump administration's budget and staffing cuts have significantly slowed the government's ability to track and respond to foodborne outbreaks. While a contamination event itself begins at a farm or processing facility, federal policy and funding cuts directly impact how quickly an outbreak is caught, contained, and stopped. In 2025, the administration scaled back the joint CDC-FDA-USDA FoodNet active surveillance system. It changed the reporting requirements from eight mandatory pathogens down to just two, making reporting for dangerous bugs like Cyclospora, Listeria, Vibrio, and Salmonella completely optional for participating states. The CDC’s parasite surveillance team was downsized, and funding cuts eliminated secondary surge-capacity staff that historically stepped in to track large-scale, multi-state contamination events. The termination of billions in CDC grants heavily impacted state health departments. Some states reported up to a 50% decrease in local epidemiology staffing, leaving fewer workers available to interview sick patients and identify the food source. Federal workforce cuts forced the suspension of the Food Emergency Response Network's proficiency testing, which ensured that over 170 national labs could produce fast, quality results during a food emergency. Sizable workforce reductions at the USDA and FDA have resulted in a drop in routine facility audits and food safety inspections. Critics argue this has pushed the food system to rely more heavily on voluntary industry self-regulation, which obviously isn’t working to protect our food supply. These combined infrastructure cuts are currently being tested by a major multi-state Cyclospora outbreak linked to contaminated lettuce, where health officials have publicly struggled to quickly trace and mitigate the national parasite source. Might Taylor Farm’s million dollar donation to a Trump PAC have anything to do with the rescinded positive test? PLEASE MAKE OUR FOOD SAFE AGAIN!