DOGE fired 89 FDA Human Foods Program staff overseeing food and chemical safety; deputy commissioner resigned in protest

On February 17, 2025, FDA Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods Jim Jones resigned after the Department of Government Efficiency fired 89 staff within the Human Foods Program in mass terminations implemented that month. The eliminated positions spanned nutrition oversight, infant-formula safety, food-safety response, and chemical-safety review -- including roughly ten staffers who reviewed potentially unsafe food ingredients -- the specialized technical staff the program depends on to carry out its statutory food-safety work.

In his resignation letter, Jones called the firings "indiscriminate" and said it would be "fruitless for me to continue in this role" given the administration's "disdain for the very people" needed to pursue its own stated agenda of "reducing diet-related chronic disease and risks from chemicals in food." In a same-day interview, Jones said the cuts to nutrition and chemical-safety work -- areas HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had identified as priorities -- had "decimated" those functions and represented "a big step backward" for the division. The terminations were part of a broader wave of DOGE-directed staffing cuts across the Department of Health and Human Services.

Updates

2025-02-25 — FDA and HHS reversed part of the terminations after public backlash [3]

Facing backlash from consumer-advocacy groups over food-supply vulnerabilities, FDA and HHS asked roughly ten of the fired food-ingredient-safety reviewers to return, part of a wider approximately 300-person rehire across the agency's drug, food, device, and tobacco programs.