Jim Jones, the director of the Meals and Drug Administration’s meals division, resigned on Monday, citing what he known as “indiscriminate” layoffs that may make it “fruitless for him to proceed.”
In his resignation letter, Mr. Jones estimated that 89 individuals of the two,000 in his division had been fired over the weekend, a lot of them freshly employed to do extra in-depth work on chemical security to guard the nation’s meals provide.
“I used to be trying ahead to working to pursue the division’s agenda of bettering the well being of People by lowering diet-related persistent illness and dangers from chemical substances in meals,” Mr. Jones wrote within the letter submitted to Sara Brenner, the appearing commissioner of the F.D.A.
However the Trump administration’s “disdain for the very individuals” who would do this work gave him no selection however to depart, he mentioned.
Mr. Jones additionally singled out Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the newly appointed secretary of the Division of Well being and Human Companies, for criticizing the F.D.A. as being too beholden to the industries it oversees and for vowing to to dismiss the company’s diet employees.
“The secretary’s feedback impugning the integrity of the meals employees, asserting they’re corrupt primarily based on falsities, is a disservice to everybody,” Mr. Jones wrote within the letter.
His resignation was first reported within the Meals Repair publication, which experiences on information within the meals trade. Mr. Jones and the F.D.A. didn’t instantly reply to messages in search of remark.
The meals division regulates some components, like synthetic colorings and dyes. It additionally performs a task in investigating outbreaks of meals borne sickness.The F.D.A. additionally funds and participates in inspections of meals and toddler components processing services within the U.S. and overseas.
The meals division’s employees members had been amongst about 700 individuals fired from the F.D.A. over the weekend. Individuals who had been let go by e mail mentioned their supervisors weren’t conscious of the cuts and had no say in them.
In his resignation letter, Mr. Jones described the employees members who had been laid off as having contemporary schooling and expertise in meals security work who would “characterize the way forward for the company.”
These employees included individuals with specialised expertise in toddler components security and meals security response.
In early 2022, the division got here underneath fiery criticism within the wake of an toddler components scandal, that started after some infants contracted infections from a lethal micro organism that was additionally found at a dilapidated plant in Michigan. The plant was shut down for a time, setting off a mass scarcity of toddler components.
Mr. Jones, whose background is in chemical regulation on the Environmental Safety Company, was introduced into the company in 2023 as a reformer.
Throughout his tenure on the F.D.A., Mr. Jones reorganized the meals division, bettering the construction to convey down obstacles between individuals who examine meals services and people who do extra scientific security work. He additionally created an workplace of meals chemical security and made it equal to an workplace that addresses micro organism like salmonella, listeria or E. coli, mentioned Scott Faber, senior vice chairman for presidency affairs on the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit advocacy group targeted on lowering chemical exposures.
“Our meals will likely be much less secure,” Mr. Faber mentioned. “That’s the take-home. There are few leaders as skilled as Jim Jones. And we’ll have fewer employees who should study all the things Jim’s realized since he’s inherited this job.”
Federal meals security efforts in latest months have nonetheless lagged behind motion in states, although, with California beating the F.D.A. to make some key food-safety modifications. California required disclosure of heavy metallic ranges in toddler meals and handed a landmark ban on some meals components, together with Purple Dye No. 3 in 2023.
The F.D.A. adopted with the same ban simply weeks in the past.
