The Trump administration disbanded two independent food safety committees without warning this week, ending ongoing research into an outbreak of bacteria in powdered infant formula and an upcoming investigation into the spread of listeria in deli meats.
The Department of Agriculture ordered the members of the two advisory committees — the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods and the National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection — to immediately stop all work on Thursday.
Members of the microbiological committee received an email late Wednesday asking them to join a meeting midday Thursday, which is when they were informed the committee would be disbanded, said Michael Hansen, a senior staff scientist at Consumer Reports who attended the meeting. Very few members were able to join because of the last-minute nature of the gathering, he said, leaving just a small subset of the committee to learn in-person about the termination.
NOTUS reviewed the email sent to members of the microbiological committee Thursday, which said that the committee is immediately disbanded. Two sources from the microbiological committee confirmed that the meat inspection committee members received a similar email.
The microbiological committee was disbanded in accordance with the Trump executive order to shrink the federal government, according to the email.
The committee was reaching the end of a two-year investigation into a 2022 outbreak of Cronobacter infections in infants in the United States. That outbreak exacerbated an infant formula shortage across the country by forcing a shutdown of a major formula manufacturing plant in Michigan. The committee was charged with helping to create a better understanding of what led to the outbreak and what strategies could be put in place to prevent it from happening again.
But now members of the committee worry their work may never see the light of day. The final products would normally be published in September of this year, Hansen said.
“It is unclear what, if anything, can be done with the reports from the current charge which are already drafted,” the text of the email reviewed by NOTUS said.
The food safety agencies rely on the committee’s scientific expertise to help them investigate poorly understood pathogens like Cronobacter, said Susan Mayne, who served as the committee’s vice chair during her tenure as director of the food safety division of the Food and Drug Administration.
“People, I hope, understand how important that is to prevent contamination of infant formula, and not enough is known about it,” Mayne added. “By dismantling the advisors that provide those services to the federal government, all we’re going to do is is the opposite of ‘Make America Healthy Again.’”
The disbandment is the latest in a string of recent changes to advisory committees across the federal government. A meeting of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention committee that makes recommendations to the childhood vaccine schedule was postponed last month, with no new date yet scheduled. An FDA committee that selects which flu strains to use in the next vaccine also had its next meeting cancelled, troubling some senators. Other committees have been disbanded in recent days, including two that conduct economic analysis at the Commerce Department and the panels that give scientific advice to the Census Bureau.
Advisory committees are important because they bring scientific opinion to the regulatory table, said Rena Steinzor, a professor emeritus of food safety law at the University of Maryland. Their role is especially critical when it comes to the food industry, said Steinzor, because they act as a backstop to corporate interest groups.
The food industry wants regulations that are “cheap, no interference,” said Steinzor, and “just pray that they don’t have a devastating-to-the-brand outbreak like Boar’s Head,” referencing the 2024 Listeria outbreak that killed 10 and was traced back to unsanitary conditions at a meat processing plant.
“What they’re doing is getting rid of balanced committees composed of scientists who may not always agree, but at least you have the right people at the table,” said Steinzor. “It’s not just one of the 12,000 lobbyists on the Hill.”
The microbiological committee was planning to begin investigations into the causes of the listeria outbreak and the spread of listeria in deli meats later this year. New members of the committee had already applied to join for this work, but those applications will no longer be reviewed, according to the email seen by NOTUS. The committee was also planning to investigate questions about aged raw milk cheeses for the Food and Drug Administration.
Steinzor said that she is concerned that the committee disbandments indicate a disregard for science of food safety.
“If you remove the independent scientists, then there is no counterweight at all,” Steinzor said.
The two committees are both independent advisory bodies made up of researchers, experts from the food and technology industries, company representatives and government officials. They are charged with finding research-based, impartial answers to questions about the safety of the U.S. food supply, and they do so on two-year cycles. The meat inspection committee was created by Congress as part of the Federal Meat Inspection Act in 1971 and is required to exist by law; the microbiological committee was created in 1988 by the USDA in response to recommendations from Congress.
“These committees were very open. There were people from the industry, I was on that, there were people from the agencies. And it was just scientists trying to come up with the best way to move forward,” Hansen said.
USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Anna Kramer is a reporter at NOTUS. Margaret Manto is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
Have tips? You can reach Anna on Signal at annakramer.54, and Margaret at margaretmanto.61.