FDA food inspector vacancies near 20% after Trump hiring freeze

CBS News

06-06-2025

Nearly 1 in 5 positions across the Food and Drug Administration's human food inspection divisions are now vacant, multiple agency officials tell CBS News, in the wake of departures encouraged by the Trump administration's cost-cutting efforts and a government-wide hiring freeze that had stalled efforts to replenish their ranks.
While the FDA has long struggled with hiring and retaining qualified investigators to inspect food producers and distributors, multiple federal health officials — who spoke on the condition of anonymity and were not authorized to speak to the press — say that the staffing gap has worsened due to early retirements and resignations.
"The FDA remains fully capable of fulfilling its public health mission to protect the safety of the American people. Under Commissioner Makary's leadership, the agency continues to meet its inspection obligations, ensuring that all facilities are reviewed within mandated timeframes," Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, told CBS News.
FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary has claimed in interviews that no inspectors were laid off at the agency as a result of the sweeping restructuring ordered by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that began in April, but has not acknowledged the retirements and resignations.
And despite Makary's statements, multiple FDA officials said they are worried about worsening attrition in the agency's ranks of investigators.
"They're not going to admit our mission is at risk and we're missing timeframes, even though I've heard that's happening," a current FDA official told CBS News in a message.
A separate current FDA official and one former official said that close to 20% of investigational positions are vacant across the agency's human foods inspectorate.
"Since 2017, our ability to fulfill its public health mission is increasingly constrained by reduced inspectional capacity. We continue to face significant obstacles in recruiting and retaining qualified investigators, particularly in the foods program, where nearly 90 investigative positions remain vacant," the agency said last month in response to a draft of a report by the HHS inspector general.
The inspector general had concluded that the FDA would need to increase inspections by more than 3,000 each year, in order to meet its goals. Under requirements laid out by Congress, the FDA is required to inspect food facilities at specific intervals, benchmarks that government watchdogs have long faulted the agency for falling short of.
"For FDA to meet the inspection timeframes moving forward, it would need to inspect approximately 7,000 high-risk facilities each year. However, FDA inspected only about 58 percent of that amount," the inspector general's June 2025 report said.
Around 40% of investigator positions are vacant for the group of investigators tasked with inspecting "critical foods" like infant formula plants, a current official said.
"Critical foods has had difficulty with staffing because every inspection is high profile and the team is traveling more often than not. It isn't sustainable for everyone," a former FDA official said.
The job of an FDA investigator has gotten harder in recent months, as the Trump administration imposed additional hurdles to make small purchases necessary for their work, ranging from buying everyday supplies to shipping samples, officials said.
"The reality is that the extra steps in budget approval processes have caused inspections to be delayed, and investigators have had to take on administrative tasks that eat into their time being productive. Everything was taking longer," the former FDA official said.
Many administrative staff and laboratory scientists supporting the FDA's food inspectors were also eliminated through layoffs, resulting in backlogs of testing and reimbursements. Some have since been reinstated by the agency.
One current and one former FDA official said the agency also had many investigators that were in the process of being hired months ago, before attempts to fill the slots were blocked by an order signed by President Trump that now extends through July 15.
Multiple officials said Friday morning they were hopeful that the Trump administration might grant an exemption to the hiring freeze after weeks of lobbying by officials within the agency.
On Friday afternoon, after HHS responded to a CBS News request for comment about this story, the FDA published its first new hiring announcement for food investigators in months, among a handful of new job postings.
"This position is being filled under a stream-lined hiring authority," the job posting reads.