Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a plan to make sweeping changes to his agency’s structure and workforce this morning, with the most significant job cuts planned for the agency that regulates food safety, food additives, and antibiotic use in agriculture.
Of the 10,000 jobs Kennedy said he’ll eliminate across the HHS, 3,400 will be at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). He’ll also cut 2,400 jobs at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which monitors infectious disease outbreaks, including the bird flu that is still spreading on poultry and dairy farms. The cuts are in addition to several thousand probationary employees fired from the HHS in February.
In a video posted to YouTube, Kennedy said that in the first few months on the job, with the help of the Department of Government Efficiency, he determined that HHS is a sprawling bureaucracy filled with “tremendous waste and duplication,” including subagencies working at cross purposes. “We’re going to streamline HHS to make our agency more efficient and more effective,” he said. “We’re going to imbue the agency with a clear sense of mission to radically improve the health of Americans and to improve agency morale.”
The plan is in line with multiple pledges Kennedy made before his confirmation as Secretary, when he said in different instances he’d eliminate entire departments and told FDA employees to “pack your bags.”
In addition to job cuts, he’s consolidating 28 HHS divisions into 15 and combining five smaller agencies into a new Administration for a Healthy America (AHA). FDA was still in the process of a restructuring that started in 2023 to move all of its work on food into one place to better prioritize food safety and nutrition. Jim Jones, the director of that division, resigned in February in response to the earlier job cuts, which he said threatened his team’s ability to do their work.
Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports, put out a statement today highlighting similar concerns. “Despite recent encouraging statements about addressing infant formula safety and harmful food chemicals, mass layoffs will undermine these initiatives and hinder the FDA’s ability to ensure our food is safe to eat,” he said.
In the video, Kennedy said that the job cuts would lead to a painful period but that no essential services will be cut and the changes will save taxpayers money while radically improving quality of service. “Our key services delivered through Medicare and Medicaid, the FDA and CDC and other agencies will enter a new era of responsiveness and a new era of effectiveness,” he said. (Link to this post.)
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