UPDATE: ProPublica Releases Devastating Piece On the Loss of Workers in Federal Health Agencies. Terrifyingly, It Aligns with an Essay I wrote in May about How Our Food Is No Longer Safe.
I've also included food recalls across the country as of August 6th
I originally wrote this piece below on May 28th, and because of a post today by C. Jacobs regarding ProPublica’s recent devastating piece about the loss of workers in federal health agencies (an absolute must-read), I was reminded of it. (The food recalls as of August 6th are included as links at the bottom of this article.) C. Jacobs aptly wrote the following on a Substack note:
Original Title: Alarming Patterns Emerge: A Multitude of Food Recalls with Weakened FDA and USDA Regulations, along with Mass Layoffs under the Trump Regime
An alarming pattern has emerged amid a multitude of current food recalls across the country, one that coexists with previous patterns of weakened food safety regulations, mass layoffs, and massive budgets within the FDA and USDA. These overlapping, intersecting, and interrelated patterns aren’t being reported at the national level by the mass media, and when they’re reported at the local level, reporters aren’t calling out the obvious, but one piece written on December 25, 2025, in Food Safety Magazine by Bailee Henderson and Adrienne Blume argue that the volume of activity that has occurred with “whirlwind changes” across all agencies has made it difficult for the media to keep up. However, the majority of the articles I found, which I’ve listed below, only discuss the food recalls, as if they exist in a vacuum, devoid of the deregulatory actions carried out by this regime. But they do not. They are also the result of policy malfeasance, corruption, and a complete disregard for consumer protections.
The moment the Trump regime assumed power again on January 20, 2025, FDA food safety regulations were significantly weakened, mass layoffs took place, and budget cuts ensued. But what can we expect to happen to the quality and safety standards around what we eat and ultimately ingest? It’s obviously not going to be a positive or good outcome. (Since Trump and his apparatchiks are prone to the erasure of history, I have taken a screenshot of a portion of an editorial piece I linked to from the NIH.gov website, and I also downloaded it to my computer, so that when it does disappear, I’ll have a copy of it. Here’s the screenshot below.) A similar story unfolded at the USDA with the evisceration of safety regulations, a 27% reduction in its workforce (24,000 employees), and budget cuts.
The people that Trump placed at the helm of the FDA also put out an announcement, based on “deregulatory initiatives” (such terminology is never a good sign for the American public), on their website on July 16, 2025, stating that they would be “revoking, or proposing to revoke, 52 food standards after concluding they are obsolete and unnecessary.” The food standards apply to dairy products, baked goods, canned fruits and vegetables, macaroni products, and other foods. They claim this will provide sellers and consumers “more flexibility,” but how it provides the latter group with more flexibility is befuddling. There are 200 additional standards in the regulations, but when the revocation of 52 food standards was announced in July of 2025, it was unclear whether or not the FDA was planning to further “modernize” the SOI program, which is a way to say that they would be further gutting or deregulating consumer protections in favor of the food industry. (Personally, it makes me glad that I buy fresh and imported products, especially from the EU, as tighter regulatory rules and authenticity requirements are imposed on them.)
This so-called analysis was part of the FDA’s ongoing examination of the Standards of Identity (SOI), which the FDA established in 1939 for consumer protection. For example, the SOI is in place so that a product sold as jam must contain at least some fruit. With the revocation of this SOI, that fruit wouldn’t be necessary. (This project absolutely reeks of Project 2025 as it’s seeking to undo New Deal policies.) In the EU, these standards have always been high. Authenticity is critical to food production and its quality there (and similar standards apply to the production of beer, wine, and spirits there). That means if one is buying jam or, say, Colby cheese from the U.S., consistency will be much more confusing. While SOI is mostly about legal definition, fraud, and economic adulteration, it also overlaps with food recalls.
To make matters worse, the Trump regime also axed several food safety committees, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF) and the National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection (NACMPI). NACMCF was created in 1988 by the Secretary of Agriculture, following a briefing from the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). NACMPI was created in 1971 to advise the Secretary of Agriculture on issues affecting federal and state inspection programs.
Brian Ronholm, director of Food Policy at Consumer Reports, said in a press release on March 6, 2025, “The termination of these two important advisory committees is very alarming and should serve as a warning to consumers that food safety will not be a priority at USDA in the foreseeable future. These expert panels provide impartial scientific advice and recommendations to USDA, FDA, and the CDC on public health issues related to food safety in the U.S. The failure to recognize and leverage the value of this scientific expertise is dangerous and irresponsible.”
As mentioned already, food recalls are yet another disturbing pattern that has emerged from the Trump regime’s budget cuts, massive layoffs, and deregulatory practices affecting both the FDA and USDA. Again, one has to seek out the patterns themselves and pull the pieces together to tell the story, as it seems no one else is doing it right now, at least as far as I can tell from my research. I got the idea to write this piece thanks to Bluesmurf’s note about a nationwide food recall on Parmesan ranch seasoning at Walmart. (Sidenote: I make my own ranch dressing from scratch, and I’ll be sharing my recipe with all of you soon on my “Gather” Substack.)
As the Note indicates, Blackstone Products, located in Providence, Utah, recalled three lots of its Parmesan Ranch seasoning due to potential Salmonella contamination. Andrea Torres reported this news for WPLG Local 10 News in South Florida.
On May 27, NewsNation reported that SKS Copack of Cerritos, a soft drink company, is recalling specialty drinks sold in 25 states over “contamination concerns” (that’s pretty sanitized language for such a serious health scare, if you ask me). According to the FDA, the states are as follows: California, Utah, Idaho, New York, New Jersey, Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin, Nevada, Virginia, Connecticut, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Minnesota.
BainBridgeGa.com for Georgia readers has a Weekly Food Recalls section! For this week (such fun reading, to be sure!), they listed “Birch Benders 12 oz Sweet Potato Pancake Mix because it may contain undeclared egg,” so anyone severely allergic to eggs better watch out nationwide. Are we expected to Google search these products or items daily if we have food allergies, have babies, or have general concerns about Salmonella, Listeria, or whatever else might be contaminating our food?
Further north, as reported by NewJersey.com, minestrone soup that’s sold at Whole Foods across numerous states was recalled.
According to Houston Chronicle reporter Yvette Orozco, there were also major recalls in Texas, including chocolate, H-E-B pork, frozen pizza, among other products.
WTNH, based in Connecticut, also announced that baby food sold there and in 48 other states was recalled due to “possible health risk.” Again, the language sounds benign, even though it could be far more serious. In this case, those at risk are babies. According to the FDA, the food, a fruit puree, contained a “naturally occurring substance” called patulin, which was found at elevated levels. As I mentioned, the health risks are considerable, as prolonged exposure to patulin can lead to immune suppression, nerve damage, headaches, fever, and nausea. Again, we’re talking about babies being at risk.
If it seems like there have been a lot of food product recalls in 2025, that’s because there have been. According to Risk and Insurance, there was “a 26% surge in volume of affected units driven by record-breaking activity in food safety and consumer products, according to Sedgwick’s Q4 Product Safety and Recall Index.”
We’re back to what Rick Perlstein coined over two decades ago during George W. Bush’s second term: “E. coli conservatism.” I don’t think I need to define what Perlstein meant by using that slogan. It’s self-explanatory. But this time around, it’s worse. Rest assured, I neither romanticize the war criminals in Bush’s cabinet nor do I think Bush is innocent of the crimes he committed during the invasion of Iraq. That said, when it came to lax governmental policy in the U.S. on food standards and inspections, I still don’t think it was driven by absolute malfeasance, corruption, and complete disdain towards the American public in the way that is compelling these people running the show and what they are doing to us now—it seems to be sheer malice when it comes to almost everything they are unleashing on us, and that can be said when it comes to food safety and food inspections. (For all the crimes that George W. Bush committed, and he should be rotting in prison for, he was not a sadist in the way that Donald Trump is a bona fide pedophilic psychopathic narcissistic sadist who now suffers from frontotemporal dementia, the latter diagnosis of which is only exacerbating his other demented deviant character traits).
This is a lot to digest (no pun intended). It’s hard to consider that your food is not safe, let alone know that it isn’t, and don’t even get me started on the food for our pets (oof!). But there are solutions to this, at least in part, and it’s something I’m going to begin doing quite soon: gardening one’s own vegetables, herbs, and fruits, making sure to buy things as fresh as possible at one’s local grocery store, and avoiding processed foods in the grocery store, if possible. ✨your weirdo friend✨ has also offered tips here on Substack about growing gardens, and they have a wealth of knowledge on getting started. As I progress with my foray into gardening, I’ll be sharing that information on my “Gather” Substack, so keep an eye out for those posts, too. Finally, if you have gardening tips, please share them as well.
FOOD RECALLS AS OF AUGUh (Oh, and to mix it up a bit, I included a recall for a med for dogs and horses that apparently included FIBERGLASS in it)
FDA investigates Salmonella outbreak linked to recalled jalapeños, urges consumers not to eat them
Farmington Hannaford recalls ground beef over possible foreign material
1.5 Million Cartons of Eggs Have Been Recalled for Salmonella Across 17 States
FDA Issues Recall For Ready-Made-Meals Sold At Kroger, Publix, And More - METAL SLIVERS FOUND
Nearly 23,000 pounds of baked spaghetti, chicken cobbler recalled over possible metal contamination
Do not give this to your pets: Urgent nationwide recall issued for dog, horse medication
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Related Articles
Timothy Inklebarger, “Trump purge at FDA and USDA triggers food safety ‘brain drain,’” Food Navigator, February 16, 2026.
Alana Semeuls, “Food Safety Was Slipping in the U.S. Then Came Mass Layoffs,” Time, April 8, 2025.
Cryn, thanks for the shout-out and republishing this piece. I hope people can check the link in the note I posted that goes to the ProPublica story too. It shows graphically how much the workforce was cut back in each area of HHS and by specialty. It's alarming. Compare that to the EU's animal protein tracking system in this link. Night and day.
https://time4europeanbeef.eu/meat-traceability-european-beef/
You cannot competently discuss the current abysmal state of government oversight of the food supply without also looking at the 3rd party audit system.