Decision to axe advisory groups could spell trouble for US food safety
A Trump administration move to axe key food safety advisory committees could leave the public more vulnerable to food-borne illnesses, critics fear, particularly alongside current legislative efforts to undermine proposed safety regulations on food processors.
The decision to cut the committees, which brought together academics, industry researchers and consumer advocates to advise agencies on food safety, comes after hospitalizations and deaths from foodborne illnesses more than doubled last year, with most illnesses attributed to the same harmful pathogens that the groups were working to address.
And it comes less than a month after Republican
lawmakers introduced legislation that would block the implementation of a
proposed new regulatory framework for
reducing Salmonella contamination in raw poultry that was introduced under
former President Joe Biden.
“It doesn’t appear that this administration at the highest
level seems to care about food safety,” said Michael Hansen, a senior staff
scientist for the group Consumer Reports who was serving on the National
Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF).
Loss of expert input
The USDA announced March 6 that it was terminating NACMCF,
which provided scientific advice and recommendations to the USDA, the US Food
& Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) on a broad range of issues related to pathogens and public
health. The USDA said all work should stop immediately, citing President Donald
Trump’s Feb. 19 executive order to
pare down the federal bureaucracy.
The agency also terminated the National Advisory Committee
on Meat and Poultry Inspection (NACMPI), which
advised the USDA on the safety of meat and poultry inspection programs.
Elaine Scallan Walter, the co-director of the Colorado
Integrated Food Safety Center of Excellence at the Colorado School of Public
Health who has not served on either committee, said she was “dismayed” by the
decision to eliminate them.
“Threats to food safety evolve constantly,” said Walter.
“There is a need for cutting-edge research that develops new strategies to keep
Americans safe. NACMCF and NACMPI currently support USDA in finding ways to
address pressing new food safety threats based on evidence. Defunding centers
of excellence and collaboration puts us all at risk.”
The decision to eliminate the committees “significantly
reduces opportunities for expert engagement with the USDA,” said Bryan
Hitchcock, Chief Science and Technology Officer at the Institute for Food
Technologists, an international nonprofit society for food professionals that
includes members from industry, academia and government. “This loss of expert
input can create gaps in the thoroughness and rigor of our food safety
protocols and reduces public engagement and transparency in the process.
A USDA spokesperson said that terminating the committees is
part of the Trump administration’s effort to eliminate inefficiencies, and
“strengthen USDA’s many services to the American people.”
The agency’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS)
“continues to deliver its mission to keep the supply of meat, poultry and egg
products safe, wholesome and properly labeled for consumers,” the USDA
spokesperson said.
“It wasn’t frivolous”
At the time of its elimination, members of NACMCF, which was
established in 1988, were researching how modern genomic techniques can more
accurately predict and control leading foodborne pathogens including E. coli,
Listeria and Salmonella, which caused most foodborne illnesses in 2024,
according to a recent report by the US
PIRG Education Fund.
Last year, the advisory group published a report in the
Journal of Food Protection with criteria the USDA could use to prevent
Salmonella infections from poultry products.
NACMCF was also preparing to release a report with
recommendations on the bacteria cronobacter after an outbreak in powdered infant
formula from September 2021 to February 2022 that panicked
parents, said Randy Worobo, a then-current NACMCF member and professor of food
science at Cornell University who said he was nominated to serve on the
committee by a person in the poultry industry. The report is now “dead in the
water,” he said.
“It wasn’t frivolous, it was very directed and relevant
topics that we worked on,” said Worobo. “Personally, I think the committee
actually streamlined bureaucracy.”
Linda Harris, a recently retired distinguished professor of
microbial food safety from the University of California, Davis, said she
considers her work on NACMCF to be some of the most consequential of her
34-year career. Harris previously served two terms on NACMCF, including one
that in 2007 published recommendations for safely
cooking poultry.
“I believe the outputs from these committees over the years
have led to better regulations and guidance documents than would have been
possible from only internal committees – a win for the food industry,
regulators, and consumer,” said Harris, adding that they are a huge return on
investment for the government and taxpayers.
There are other federal committees that work on food safety
issues, including the FDA’s Science Board, which
does not focus solely on food safety, and the CDC’s Food Safety Modernization Act Surveillance
Working Group, which works on foodborne disease surveillance.
However, “there are no other committees like NACMCF” that
jointly advised multiple agencies on food safety issues, said Barbara Kowalcyk,
Director of the Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security at George
Washington University who previously served on NACMCF and other advisory
committees.
Thomas Gremillion, Director of Food Policy at the Consumer
Federation of America, served on NACMPI during the first Trump administration.
The committee made recommendations on E. coli testing, labeling frozen raw
chicken products, and managing Listeria risk, he said.
NACMPI, established in 1971, also included committee members
from across sectors – large and small meat processors, academia, state
regulators and extension agencies, and public health agencies, providing a
forum to establish common ground in “controversial policy debates,” said
Gremillion.
Scientists from many large food corporations and industry
groups have served on both committees, including, most recently, Cargill
Protein, the North American Meat Institute, Butterball, Smithfield Foods,
Newman’s Own and the American Foods Group.
Food safety’s future
While cutting the committees may not lead to immediate food
safety problems, it could result in “unanticipated consequences in the future,”
said Craig Hedberg, co-director of the Minnesota Integrated Food Safety Center
of Excellence at the University of Minnesota, who did not serve on the
committees.
“My great concern with the directions the current
administration is taking with respect to these and other advisory bodies, is
the sense that the administration wants to have the ability to make decisions
without critical review by external experts,” said Hedberg. “This is, no doubt,
more efficient…however, it will likely lead to adopting policies that are not
fully thought out.”
Without NACMCF and NACMPI providing outside scientific
input, food safety may be left up to federal agencies that are responsible for
overseeing particular foods, said Worobo. “They’re going to be solely
responsible for making decisions and recommendations without any kind of
third-party input, especially from industry. I think there’s going to be
perhaps a lapse of a better understanding of what the industry’s doing and what
the industry should do.”
Beyond the loss of these food safety advisory committees,
Worobo is concerned that CDC staffing cuts under the Trump administration will
impact surveillance programs important to human health and food safety.
“You can have nutritious food, but if it’s not safe then it
can’t be considered food,” he said.
