FDA planning for fewer food and drug inspections due to layoffs, officials say

Senior Food and Drug Administration leaders are planning for cutbacks to the number of routine food and drug inspections conducted by the agency, multiple officials say, due to steep layoffs this week in support staff. 

Around 170 workers were cut from the FDA’s Office of Inspections and Investigations, according to two federal health officials who were not authorized to speak publicly. 

The Department of Health and Human Services has said layoffs ordered by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with some 10,000 workers let go from the department, would not directly cut FDA’s inspections staff. But in meetings among federal health officials, the agency’s remaining leaders have grappled with how to deal with major delays and disruptions caused by the loss of administrative and management staff who had supported the agency’s inspectors, according to two FDA officials.

“These administrative functions are being streamlined as part of HHS’ transformation initiative to make the agency more efficient and responsive. FDA inspectors were not impacted and this critical work will continue,” an HHS spokesperson said in a statement.

The inspections and investigations office will now need to work with FDA’s drug, device and food centers to reprioritize their workload for the rest of the year, one official said. That will mean trimming routine “surveillance inspections” for more urgent tasks, the official said, like inspections of firms where the agency has been alerted to a safety risk or follow-up visits to ensure that drugmakers or food producers have fixed previous violations.

One of the biggest immediate impacts on the agency’s inspectors stems from the elimination of the office’s travel operations division, one official said. The team’s work ranged from booking flights to coordinating with the State Department to secure translators needed for inspections of drugmakers and food producers abroad.

“As of yesterday, all front-line investigators will now be spending significant time processing their own travel and related administrative requirements, rather than spending that time in firms ensuring the American consumer is protected,” one FDA official told CBS News.

A pilot program of unannounced foreign inspections has also been paused due to the cuts, an official said, because of the loss of staff that had been tasked with quickly securing translators around the world.

The FDA has long struggled to meet its own inspection goals, which was worsened by a backlog created during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a January report by the Government Accountability Office, the FDA was facing a swelling list of food safety inspections that were on track to miss deadlines mandated by Congress, as they struggled to hire and retain qualified inspectors. 

While current inspections are still taking place, multiple FDA officials said that cuts are likely to worsen delays caused by other challenges introduced by the Trump administration’s efforts to cut spending in recent months.

As one example, multiple officials said that field operations have been hampered by a new government-wide $1 limit on spending cards. Any spending above that limit requires a cumbersome approval process. 

Inspectors had already been asked to plan their inspections a month in advance due to the delays caused by the spending limit, one official said.