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I’m struck by the harshness of the USDA’s recent press announcement:  In First 100 Days, Secretary Rollins Puts Farmers First, Reverses Woke Priorities of Biden Administration

“It is absurd that while the Biden Administration was driving up inflation, American taxpayers were forced to fund billions in woke DEI initiatives. American farmers and ranchers don’t need DEI, they need reduced regulations and an Administration that is actively putting them first. In the first 100 days of the Trump Administration, USDA has done exactly that, by cancelling over 3,600 contracts and grants saving more than $5.5 billion. I look forward to finishing our work of cleaning out Biden’s bureaucratic basement and moving forward with this Administration’s priorities that put American farmers first,” said Secretary Rollins.

The statement boasts that Secretary Rollins

• Issued a memorandum to rescind all DEI programs and celebrations.
• Directed USDA to review Inflation Reduction Act funding to ensure that programs are focused on supporting farmers and ranchers,
• Terminated 597 grants, which totaled more than $3.45 billion and over 3,000 contracts totaling $1.8 billion…in unnecessary and wasteful spending.
• Canceled nearly 1,000 employee trainings, more than 750 of which focused on DEI alone.
• To ensure that taxpayer dollars are directly supporting farmers and not serving as a Green New Scam slush fund for non-governmental organizations, Secretary Rollins announced the cancellation of the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities (PCSC).

I am having a hard time understanding how these actions will help farmers and ranchers, especially because one of the cut programs was the Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant, which paid farmers to provide fresh food to schools—a totally win/win program costing a tiny fraction of USDA’s budget but of inestimable worth to participating local farmers.

The anti-woke rhetoric reminds me of the McCarthy anti-Communist era.  If Biden did it, it’s bad.  If it helps vulnerable Americans, well, it’s “leftist ideology.”

I do not see how any of this will Make America Healthy Again.

If you think it will, please explain.

The Trump Administration has issued its proposed budget.

It begins with the rhetoric characteristic of this administration.

The recommended funding levels result from a rigorous, line-by-line review of FY 2025 spending, which was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.

If anything, these proposals are totally contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans, so much so that it’s hard to know where to begin, but let’s start with some selections from the USDA summary on page 31.

• Food Safety Inspection Service: a $15 million increase for meat and poultry inspection
• National Institute of Food and Agriculture: $602 million decrease (“eliminates wasteful, woke programming,”… “protects funding to youth and K-12 programs such as 4-H clubs, tribal colleges, and universities”)
• Agricultural Research Service and USDA Research Statistical Agencies: $159 million decrease.  Note the rhetoric: “…stop climate-politicized additional scopes added by the Biden Administration…”
• Farm Service Agency: $358 million decrease
• State, local, tribal, and NGO conservation programs: $303 million decrease
• Commodity Supplemental Food Program: $425 million decrease .  This program, which mostly helps seniors, is being replaced with “MAHA food boxes.”

On this last one: Oh no.  Not that again.  The boxes are a logistic nightmare , absurdly expensive, and do not help any except the largest farmers.

Note that there is nothing here about SNAP, which comes out of USDA’s budget.  SNAP is an entitlement; only Congress can cut its budget, and would have to do so through the Farm Bill.

Fortunately, these are proposals, which means there is at least a chance that Congress won’t agree to them.

The USDA announced last week that it is withdrawing its proposed framework for reducing Salmonella in raw poultry.  Oh great.

Why?

FSIS received 7,089 comments on the proposed framework…from a variety of stakeholders that included poultry and meat industry trade associations, small poultry producer and processor trade associations, large and small poultry processing establishments, consumer advocacy organizations…The issues that generated the most comments…[were] the proposed Salmonella levels and serotypes for the final product standards…the scientific and technical information used to support the proposed framework, the potential economic impacts of the proposed framework, and the potential impact of the proposed framework on small poultry growers and processors. Several comments also suggested alternative approaches other than the proposed framework for addressing Salmonella illnesses associated with poultry products.

While FSIS continues to support the goal of reducing Salmonella illnesses associated with poultry products, the Agency believes that the comments have raised several important issues that warrant further consideration.

Consumer Reports, which has for years been pushing the USDA to do something about Salmonella contamination in poultry, is not happy with this move, not least because its investigators found large numbers of poultry plants to be heavily contaminated with Salmonella. contamination.

The proposed rule was intended to help reduce the number of salmonella infections in the U.S. Of the estimated 1.35 million illnesses that occur each year from food tainted with the bacteria, nearly 200,000 of them are due to chicken, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “And instead of declining, salmonella infections are increasing and expected to continue to grow…This move, along with the steep budget and staffing cuts at the USDA and FDA, appears to be part of an overall effort to weaken food safety oversight,” says director of food policy at Consumer Reports.

Comment

This is an extremely disappointing decision.  The poultry industry argues that Salmonella contamination is normal.  They don’t need to do anything to prevent chickens getting contaminated.  It is your responsibility to store and cook your chicken properly.

Safety advocates (like me) argue that Salmonella is not normal, contamination is preventable, and the industry ought to be doing that.  The USDA’s 2021 proposal to declare Salmonella an adulterant was a major step in making food safer.

This decision is a major setback.

Resources

What the USDA says about Salmonella

What the USDA says today about reducing Salmonella in poultry.  The web page displays USDA’s 2021 announcement that it would be “mobilizing a stronger and more comprehensive effort to reduce Salmonella illnesses associated with poultry products.”

To me personally, the big news last week (besides my profile in the New York Times) is the announcement that the USDA plans to move its headquarters out of Washington, DC to three locations yet to be determined.

USDA is expected to offload one of its two Washington headquarters buildings, according to two employees familiar with the matter.

The relocations will accompany widespread layoffs at the department, according to four officials made aware of the plans, though the exact number is not yet clear. Those cuts are expected in late April or early May.

Some employees have been told to expect the department to cut back to fiscal 2019 staffing levels—which would lead to USDA slashing around 9,000 of its 98,000 employees—while others have been told there is a an overall federal workforce reduction number the administration has developed and the department will do its part proportionally to meet that target.

My translation: I haven’t been able to confirm this story, but what better way to get USDA employees to quit en masse.  This worked during Trump I to dismantle the Economic Research Service, a national treasure in my view.  I complained early and often about its transfer to Kansas City, MO.

As this article explains,

In 2019, the department relocated the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Kansas City, Mo., over the objections of employees and some lawmakers. Following the move, both agencies lost more than half of their staff, leading to a significant loss of productivity from which it took the agencies years to recover. Under President Biden, both agencies moved their headquarters back to Washington while maintaining their Kansas City offices.

I would say (and the Government Accountability Office agrees) the ERS has never recovered.  It still produces technical reports, but no longer publishes the kind of analytical pieces that I found so valuable to my work.

It’s fine to move government offices to the middle of the country.  Anything to help repopulate middle America is a good thing.

But this move has only one real purpose: to reduce staff.

This means reducing meat inspectors, and people who help participants use food assistance programs.  It means getting rid of agricultural and other USDA-supported researchers.  Basically, it means getting rid of anyone good enough to get another job without having to relocate.

Even without this, USDA staff are quitting in droves: USDA employees head for the doors as potential RIFs [reduction in forces] loom

Thousands of USDA employees are planning to leave the agency through a deferred resignation program that could challenge the department’s ability to fulfill critical functions such as food import and export inspections. According to one report, 16,000 USDA employees have opted for buyouts over two rounds.

I considered the transfer of the ERS to Kansas to be a national tragedy.  This is another one.

Thanks to Jim Krieger of Healthy Food America, for sending this one.

According to the Daily Beast: MAGA Influencers Caught Red-Handed Shilling for Big Soda

A string of MAGA influencers appear to have been caught taking money from Big Soda to undermine the government’s attempts to ban people from buying soda with food stamps.  Last week, a host of influential online pro-Trump personalities…raised eyebrows on X when they all appeared to abruptly change their views on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s push to pass legislation which would ban food-stamp recipients from spending their money on soft drinks and junk food….conservative journalist Nick Sortor posted an expose of the offending posts side-by-side on X, alongside claims they had been paid to adopt a pro-soda stance by a social media PR company named Influenceable….“Not a SINGLE ONE of them disclosed they were paid for these posts, which led readers to believe a general SODA BAN was in the works.”

According to The Daily Wire: Soda Lobby Group American Beverage Denies Paying Influencers To Fight SNAP Restrictions

In a statement sent to The Daily Wire on Tuesday, ABA President and CEO Kevin Keane further echoed the denial, saying it had conducted a “thorough vetting” and is “confident” that it was not involved in the effort.

Whew.  What is this about?

The issue of adding sugar-sweetened beverages to the short list of food items that cannot be bought with SNAP benefits (Alcohol, Cigarettes, prepared foods, medicines, supplements) is a difficult one, splitting some public health advocates from some anti-hunger advocates and forging unexpected political alliances.

RFK Jr’s MAHA movement wants sodas out of SNAP.  The MAHA arguments:

• Sodas contain sugars (lots) but no other nutrients.
• Drinking a lot of them correlates with poor health.
• SNAP recipients buy a lot of soda.
• SNAP benefit are not taxed, making the cost of sodas cheaper for them in some states.
• SNAP recipients could still buy sodas with their own (non-SNAP) money.
• The WIC program specifies which foods (all of them healthy) recipients can buy with their benefits; it works fine.

Arguments against:

• Poor people should be able to eat just as unhealthfully as everyone else.
• Blocking them from buying sodas is condescending.
• Doing this removes choice and is unfair.
• A ban will hurt the profits of the soda industry and retailers who sell sodas.

For years, public health advocates and some states have called for pilot projects (“waivers”) to see how removing sodas might work.  The USDA has always rejected such petitions.

I favor pilot projects, in part because of what I learned as a member of the SNAP to Health Commission, and also because of the letters I received after publication of Soda Politics.  SNAP recipients wrote me that they viewed their benefits as a license to buy junk food and would welcome restrictions.  They would not buy as much soda if they had to pay for it with non-SNAP funds.

The new USDA Secretary says she will agree to waivers.  Good.  Let’s try this and see how it works.

It’s not easy to figure out what’s happening on the food front in DC these days, but a lot of it does not sound good.  Here are a bunch from last week.

I.  Food Bank Support. USDA stops $500 million worth of shipments of food to food banks.

Food banks across the country are scrambling to make up a $500 million budget shortfall after the Trump administration froze funds for hundreds of shipments of produce, poultry and other items that states had planned to distribute to needy residents.

The Biden administration had slated the aid for distribution to food banks during the 2025 fiscal year through the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which is run by the Agriculture Department and backed by a federal fund known as the Commodity Credit Corporation. But in recent weeks, many food banks learned that the shipments they had expected to receive this spring had been suspended.

II.  Line speeds in meat processing plants.  USDA announces “streamlined” meat processing.  This is USDA-speak for increasing line speeds in processing plants, something terrifying to anyone who cares about worker safety and food safety.  As Food Safety News puts it, this is unsafe at any speed—again.

Once more, policymakers are making the same catastrophic mistake. Once more, industries are downplaying risk while lives hang in the balance. Once more, we are choosing efficiency over responsibility…It’s a reckless increase in processing speeds that threatens to overwhelm the very safeguards meant to protect both workers and consumers.

III.  Food safety rules.  FDA puts food safety rule on hold

In an announcement on March 20, the Food and Drug Administration said it intends to publish a proposed rule “at a later time.” The rule has already been published and approved and was set to go into effect Jan. 1, 2026. The rule was mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act, which Congress approved in 2010.

The food industry has been pushing back against the rule since before it was written, citing expenses. Industry groups applauded the FDA’s postponement of enforcement of the rule.

IV.  Seed Banks.  DOGE is trying to fire staff of the USDA’s National Plant Germplasm System, which stores 62,000 seed samples.

Comment

I’m not seeing much about Making America Healthy Again, beyond encouraging the elimination of artificial colors and trying to do something about the GRAS loophole, which lets companies essentially self-determine whether additives are safe.  Those are both worth doing, and have been a long time coming.  I still want to see this administration take strong action on:

• Ultra-processed food
• Food Safety
• School meals
• Support for small and medium farms

The cancelling of funding for the Diabetes Prevention Program, a 30-year longitudinal study, seems at odds with MAHA.  I hope the funding gets restored quicky.

USDA and HHS have announced an update on the dietary guidelines process.

A quick recap: The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee released its report last year.  The agencies are responsible for writing the actual guidelines, based on that report or not.

The USDA Secretary, Brooke Rollins, writes:

Secretary [of HHS] Kennedy and I have a powerful, complementary role in this, and it starts with updating federal dietary guidance. We will make certain the 2025-2030 Guidelines are based on sound science, not political science. Gone are the days where leftist ideologies guide public policy.”

Leftist ideologies?  She has to be kidding.  Since when did leftist ideologies influence the dietary guidelines?

Oh.  Wait.  Silly me.  I get it.  She means meat. 

Plant-based = leftist ideology.

You don’t believe me?  See Nina Teicholz’s editorial in the Wall Street Journal:  Meat will make America Healthy Again.

Ms. Rollins and Mr. Kennedy should reject suggestions from an expert committee that the 2025-30 federal guidelines place an even greater emphasis on plant-based proteins and that they recommend “reducing intakes of red and processed meats.” As the Agriculture Department found in 2010, there is either “no relationship” or a “limited inconsistent” relationship between any protein type and chronic diseases, including obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Protein, sure.  But meat?  Consistent evidence for years indicates that people in industrialized countries would be healthier eating less meat and more plants.  Less does not necessarily mean none; it means less than currently consumed and a lot less in some cases.

If USDA and HHS are serious about Making Americans Healthier Again, they will revise the Dietary Guidelines according to the science.  In my view, that means advising eating less of ultra-processed foods, as well as meat.

I was intrigued by this item from WattPoultry: Blame for high US egg prices is now a political pinataThe lack of understanding of basic economics is frustrating, but the misguided blame game over the cause of high egg prices presents an opportunity for change.  Read more

Everyone in the poultry industry knows that HPAI [Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza] caused laying hen losses and reduced the supply of eggs, and this is why retail egg prices, which have always been demand inelastic, have reached historic highs…The political “crisis” over egg prices can be used to open eyes and ears to new ideas on how best to deal with HPAI. We are over three years into the current outbreaks and the situation is arguably worse than it has ever been with the virus found in nearly 1,000 dairy herds, dozens of species of wild mammals and, of course, in all sorts of waterfowl and other wild bird species.

The article suggests the urgent need for more funding for:

• Research
• Vaccines
• Testing

These seem like minimal asks.  We need them all.

Here’s what the USDA is doing:  USDA invests up to $1 billion to combat avian flu and reduce egg prices.