Inside Story

Lately it seems like you can’t turn around without another report of a major food recall. So it seems logical that we need the FDA out there doing food safety inspections now, more than ever. But it appears that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) might actually be ending its food safety inspections.

According to CBS News, federal health officials have confirmed that most of the food safety inspections currently done by the FDA are about to end. These plans aren’t set in stone yet and will likely need Senate approval, but it’s still pretty concerning.

So, what’s going on? As Delish reports, basically, routine safety inspections would shift from the feds to the states, meaning the states would handle inspections for products like milk and other foods. As it turns out, the states have already been doing some of this. A 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office found that about a third of food safety inspections are already handled by the states. However, multiple federal health officials said that the state work currently is often reserved for lower-risk inspections.

Why the change? Cost. Moving more regulation away from the federal government could save money and free up some resources. “FDA audits have determined state inspections to be high quality, and the costs show them to be a good economic value,” Steve Mandernach, executive director of the Association of Food and Drug Officials, told CBS News in a statement. “There is significant cost to managing two systems also.”

Mandernach drew a parallel to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, under which hospitals and nursing homes are largely inspected by state agencies but overseen by the federal government.  He also pointed to how the FDA regulates produce farms. The FDA has agreements with most states to pay for routine inspections conducted by local agriculture departments, where they often handle inspections and enforcement themselves.

But what about the cost to consumer health and safety? The FDA is ultimately responsible for the safety of much of the U.S. food supply that’s distributed over state lines, like packaged products, seafood, eggs and produce. Some kinds of meat are regulated by a different agency inside the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

Some higher-risk routine food inspections would likely remain at the FDA under the plans, two officials said. For example, agency staff currently conduct annual visits to infant formula manufacturers, which are overseen separately as “critical foods” inspections. States would also not be able to take on the work of routine inspections in foreign food facilities.  It is unclear what would happen for the states that do not have contracts with the FDA to conduct food inspections, which range from Hawaii to Delaware.

While there might be some good things about moving more regulation to the states, a lot of consumers are pretty anxious about these changes. Especially with everything that’s been going on in the government. Not only have there been a lot of layoffs in the FDA and Health and Human Services Department, but quality control programs in the FDA have been paused. This move, according to Reuters, has led to serious delays in protecting people from things like Cyclospora in spinach or pesticides like glyphosate in barley.

In the past, FDA inspectors had been trained to do multiple kinds of inspections, officials said, instead of specializing only in food safety inspections. But now with steep layoffs at the office’s support staff is expected to result in cutbacks to the number of inspections that can be done by the agency, CBS News previously reported.

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary has also greenlighted plans to hire contractors to attempt to plug the hole left by the laid-off workers. “In theory, relying on states to do more routine food inspection work could lead to better food safety,” said Thomas Gremillion, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, in an email to CBS News. 

However, Gremillion cautioned that a transition in how food inspections are done by the FDA would take significant time and resources.  “So far, this Administration has acted with reckless disregard for how its policies will affect the detection and prevention of foodborne illness, and any plans to replace federal food inspectors with some other workforce deserves suspicion,” he said.

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