This week at Unbreaking, November 13
As of yesterday, the longest-ever shutdown of the federal government has ended. We’ll be updating our timelines and explainers as the implications of this resolution become clear for all the issues we cover.
What we know for now is that Democrats achieved no measurable progress toward the restoration of affordable healthcare. The massive cuts to Medicaid that the GOP-controlled Congress pushed through this summer are all scheduled to go into effect, and things look bleak for the millions of people in the US whose ACA marketplace coverage will more than double in price. Our Medicaid explainer covers the knowable details for those who rely on Medicaid coverage — about one fifth of the US population.
Unrelated to healthcare coverage but very related to basic health and well-being, we spent time this week looking at federal food safety oversight and how it’s getting worse.
If you’ve seen recent coverage of the deadly ongoing Listeria outbreak associated with prepared pasta, the botulism contamination in baby formula, or the high salmonella levels in grocery-store chicken, you may have wondered if these events are related to Trump administration changes at the CDC, FDA, and USDA. We wish we knew, too. In the short term, it’s nearly impossible to draw causal connections between outbreaks of food poisoning and government actions. But we’ve already seen worrying disruptions:
- Mass firings in an already understaffed federal food safety workforce: These labor losses necessarily weaken oversight despite the administration’s public promises to make our food supply safer.
- Fewer inspections of food coming into the US: International inspection to make sure that imported food meets US safety standards has been a weak point at the FDA for decades. A ProPublica investigation revealed that despite the administration’s promise to do more surprise inspections of international food facilities, the total number of international inspections (surprise and scheduled) is at its lowest since 2011, peak pandemic years excepted.
- Safety expertise is being replaced by industry flacks and defenders: The food industry’s influence in federal food safety has ballooned this year across agencies. In one particularly concerning instance, the administration announced “Operation Stork Speed” to improve infant formula safety but then put a lawyer who defended a formula maker in a suit about (alleged) deadly risks to premature babies in charge of FDA’s Human Foods Program and simultaneously fired workers with infant formula expertise. There is currently an outbreak of botulism caused by infant formula.
- Data tracking has been gutted: The CDC’s FoodNet system previously tracked foodborne illnesses from eight pathogens and now tracks just two. It used to include Listeria, the bacteria linked to a current deadly outbreak. Now it doesn’t.
COUNTERMOVES: Across the issues we track, we’ve seen state and local governments step up as the Trump administration cuts and weaponizes federal services. As federal regulatory enforcement dwindles, state laws are also becoming even more important: Reuters reports that more firms are filing class action suits grounded in state consumer protection laws.
We cover these events and many more in our Food Safety timeline and explainer.
RESEARCH ALERT: Our food safety team has a question: How are food recalls being affected by layoffs and by the long shutdown that just ended? The data is out there — is anyone looking into it? We’ve reached out to reporters but haven’t located an existing investigation into this question.
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