FDA rehires at least one food safety employee; federal judge says some firings likely done illegally

Some staff at the FDA and USDA could be headed back to work after mass government firings at the behest of the Department of Governmental Efficiency led by Elon Musk.

The billionaire native of South Africa ordered the firings last week as part of a culling of the federal government workforce ordered by President Trump.

District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ruled on Feb. 27 that many of the firings of the government’s “probational” employees — those who haven’t been on the job for three years — were likely illegal. “Probationary employees are the lifeblood of our government,” the judge wrote. 

“This ruling by Judge Alsup is an important initial victory for patriotic Americans across this country who were illegally fired from their jobs by an agency that had no authority to do so,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, told the Associated Press. The federation is one of several groups that have sued the government for firing employees that have job protections in place.

It is not clear whether employees of the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are included in the ruling from Judge Alsup.

However, the FDA is hiring back some employees who work in areas of food safety. 

Some employees who work with investigating food chemicals and additives are being rehired by the FDA. The division that deals with post-market reviews of food chemicals is rehiring some of its workers, according to the Associated Press. Trump’s pick for the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has said that one of the key areas he is concerned about is food additives.

Also, the head of the FDA’s infant formula safety team has been rehired, according to the Associated Press. The position is within the Office of Critical Foods, a group of employees put in place after the FDA’s mishandling of an infant formula crises in 2022 that saw babies infected with cronobacter. The illnesses led to the recall of infant formula by the nation’s largest supplier, Abbott Nutrition, which produces Similac and other popular brands. The recall left stores shelves empty for weeks, forcing parents to drive for hours in search of formula for their infants.

An investigation into the outbreak and recall revealed a lack of communication within the FDA’s food division and found that a whistleblower complaint that eventually panned out had been lost in a mailroom for months.

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