A senior official at the US Food and Drug Administration has reportedly quit, pointing to recent stuff cuts at the food-safety agency.
According to multiple reports in the US, Jim Jones, the head of the FDA’s food division, has stepped down.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Just Food has approached the FDA for comment.
The news was first reported by specialist US food policy publication Food Fix.
In a subsequent report, Bloomberg said it had viewed a resignation letter Jones sent to Sara Brenner, the acting commissioner at the FDA.
Jones was appointed to the then new role of deputy commissioner for human foods at the FDA in 2023. He was brought in to oversee the restructure of the agency’s Human Foods Program after the organisation was criticised for its role in the infant-formula supply crisis in the country a year earlier.
Bloomberg said that, in the letter, Jones referred to the laying off of 89 staff within the FDA’s food division as “indiscriminate”.
Last week, the new Trump administration cut thousands of federal jobs.
“I was looking forward to working to pursue the department’s agenda of improving the health of Americans by reducing diet-related chronic disease and risks from chemicals in food,” Jones wrote in the letter, Bloomberg said.
In an interview with specialist health publication Stat News, Jones was quoted as saying he “and the organisation were very excited about the agenda” outlined by US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy “in particular around nutrition and food chemical safety”.
Jones said many of the staff laid off “were going to be doing chemical safety work. Some were doing nutrition work”.
In August, Kennedy, a former Democrat, ended his own presidential campaign and endorsed Trump’s push for the White House. He has launched Make America Healthy Again, a campaign that “prioritises regenerative agriculture, protects natural resources and removes harmful toxins from our food, water and air”.
Kennedy has pinned the “obesity epidemic” in the US on “ultra-processed food”, claiming the country has a “broken food system”.
At a Senate hearing last month, he also said he would “scrutinise the chemical additives in our food supply”.
Kennedy, also known as RFK Jr., told the US Senate Committee on Finance the food industry is the “primary culprit” in the worsening health epidemic.
Reacting to the news of Jones’ resignation, Dr. Peter Lurie, president of US non-profit the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said: “Jim Jones, the recently resigned head of the food division at the US Food and Drug Administration, and his Human Foods team had been struggling to address some of the very issues raised by the so-called MAHA movement, but the indiscriminate mass firing of the newest staff is going to make things worse, not better. If you go into surgery with a hatchet instead of a scalpel, the result is carnage.”
In a statement to Bloomberg, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said some “bureaucrats” are resistant to the “mandate delivered by the American people.”
She reportedly added: “President Trump is only interested in the best and most qualified people who are also willing to implement his America First Agenda on behalf of the American people. It’s not for everyone and that’s okay.”
