The Food and Drug Administration’s top official on food safety abruptly resigned, citing the Trump administration’s firings.
As first reported by Food Fix, Jim Jones left his post as FDA’s deputy commissioner for the human foods program over the “indiscriminate firing” of 89 employees.
“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 to the agency’s acting commissioner in a letter reviewed by multiple news outlets. “It has been increasingly clear that with the Trump Administration’s disdain for the very people necessary to implement your agenda, however, it would have been fruitless for me to continue in this role.”
Jones, who helped lead the push toward FDA’s recent ban on food dye red No. 3, told STAT News that “many” of the 89 people fired “were going to be doing chemical safety work” or “nutrition work.”
