U.S. Farm Agency Staff Warn Congress of Food Safety Risks, Political Interference

By Leah Douglas

WASHINGTON, May 13 (Reuters) – Unions representing staff in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s research, animal health, and nutrition agencies warned lawmakers of political interference and irreparable damage to their work from President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the federal government in a letter sent on Monday night.

More than 15,000 USDA staff have been fired or accepted Trump’s financial incentives to leave the agency, leaving fewer experts to respond to an ongoing outbreak of bird flu and draining technical staff from local offices that serve farmers.

Trump’s proposed budget would cut $4.5 billion from the USDA, including from conservation and research programs. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has defended the cuts as efficient.

“The combination of harmful budget cuts, executive overreach, and politically motivated staffing changes have weakened key agencies,” said the letter from 20 officials of USDA staff unions and sent to the chairs and ranking members of the Senate and House appropriations committees that oversee the agency.

“Without Congressional oversight, the decades of knowledge and infrastructure that ensure food safety and security will be dismantled.”

The USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Across the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, 98 of 167 food safety scientists have resigned, according to the letter.

The ARS’s work includes detecting pathogens, preventing foodborne illness, and identifying chemical and other contaminants in food, according to the USDA website.

Researchers have been barred from travel to conferences and staff attrition has hobbled work on climate adaptation, hunger and fraud prevention in nutrition programs, the letter said.

Scientists have been told not to discuss agency staffing losses or research cuts with external stakeholders and face ambiguity about what public activities are permitted, said Ethan Roberts, a technician at an ARS lab in Illinois and president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3247.

“The only way that you can learn about what truly is and is not allowed is by doing it and getting punished or reprimanded,” Roberts said.

In addition to AFGE, the staff unions are represented by the National Treasury Employees Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

(Reporting by Leah Douglas in Washington; Editing by Aurora Ellis)