Budget Cuts Could Impact Food Safety in the U.S., Experts Predict

Keeping America's food supply chain in tip-top shape is traditionally one of the highest priorities for the government. It's so important, in fact, that they have several agencies dedicated to monitoring and inspecting food and food-related industries, and then alerting the public when things go wrong.

However, the Trump administration's decision to slash the budgets that help fund these agencies will cause them to be less able to respond to dangerous situations, according to experts.

And that's something that they warn could be disastrous for Americans, especially as the number of consumer product recalls seems to continue rising.

But what does it really mean when Donald Trump decides to make food safety budget cuts? Continue reading to learn more about what the pros say, and how these cuts can directly impact American consumers who rely on having a healthy and safe food supply chain to keep themselves and their children from getting sick.

In 2025, several different agencies saw significant staffing shortages, which the experts at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) say could impact food safety. These agencies include the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

According to the NSAC, each of these agencies has lost a considerable number of staff.

That includes a 19 percent reduction at the FDA and an eight percent reduction at FSIS as of November 2025.

If these agencies sound familiar, it's because they are the ones you are most likely to hear from when it comes to food safety and quality. For example, both the FDA and FSIS are typically the agencies behind product recall announcements, and both of them are usually on the front lines of an investigation into what went wrong, especially when there are illnesses or deaths involved.

According to Stat News, the budget cuts that caused these job shortages could lead to more foodborne illnesses. Not only do they predict that the number of issues will increase, but they also believe that it will be harder to monitor the pathogens that make us sick when they enter the food supply.

For example, one agency dropped the number of foodborne pathogens it tracks from eight to just two.

That means that not only are the number of inspections decreasing, but the ability to track outbreaks will be lost as well.

"It’s not that they [the Trump administration] are necessarily choosing to harm the system,” a former member of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told Stat News. “It’s that all of these cuts that are not coherent are all working against each other, and therefore you end up with a system that’s just not functioning well.”

ProPublica says that the budget cuts will not only reduce the number of domestic inspections and monitoring services, but they will also have impacts abroad. And the impacts were already felt in the first year of the cuts, when the publication said that international inspections of facilities that sell to U.S. markets had dropped to historic lows.

In a time when it seems like food recalls and outbreaks are at an all-time high, many people are worried about the future.

And when you consider that State News says that foodborne illnesses are responsible for nearly 48 million illnesses each year, as well as 3,000 deaths, it's easy to see why experts are trying to spread the word.