A new ProPublica investigation and corroborating data from the Government Accountability Office confirm a dangerous collapse in U.S. food safety oversight. Under Donald Trump, foreign food inspections by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have fallen to historic lows — even lower than during the pandemic years. The agency’s own public dashboard and GAO analysis show that the FDA averaged just 917 foreign food-facility inspections per year between FY 2018 and 2023, against a congressional mandate of 19,200 annually under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). That’s barely 5 percent of the target.
This decline comes as America has never relied more heavily on imported food. According to the FDA, 94 percent of our seafood, 55 percent of fresh fruit, and 32 percent of fresh vegetables now come from abroad — produced in more than 125,000 foreign facilities across 200 countries. In-person inspections are the only way to verify that these suppliers maintain sanitary conditions, conduct accurate pathogen testing, and prevent contamination.
Yet those inspections have been gutted. Roughly one in five FDA employees responsible for food and drug safety has been laid off or forced out since Trump’s staffing cuts began. Investigators who once traveled to inspect foreign facilities are now bogged down with their own travel logistics and unreimbursed expenses, with more than $1 million in backlogged reimbursements reported. Morale has cratered, and institutional knowledge has vanished as senior inspectors retire or quit.
The administration’s so-called “efficiency” measures have also suspended the FDA’s quality-control program across 170 food-testing laboratories and scaled back the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network to track only two pathogens — salmonella and one strain of E. coli. These actions, combined with inspection collapse, have “decimated basic regulatory oversight functions,” according to Consumer Reports’ food-policy director.
Congress established the FSMA after repeated outbreaks linked to imported food, recognizing that inspection and traceability save lives. Those safeguards have now been hollowed out. As one FDA official told reporters, “It’s only a matter of time before people die.”
I urge you to hold immediate hearings on the status of foreign food inspections, compel testimony from the Department of Health and Human Services and the FDA, and restore staffing and oversight funding to pre-Trump levels. America cannot afford a food-safety collapse born of political neglect.
Protect the nation’s dinner tables. Restore the FDA’s strength.
First sent on November 6 by Coleman · 690 signers in
the past 7 days
