Lettuce Pray:
The FDA's Vanishing Act and Return of Mystery Meat
In 1906, Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to expose the cruel conditions of meatpacking workers. Instead, he scared America into creating the FDA after readers realized their sausage might contain more thumb than pork.
Fast-forward to 2025: we’ve come full circle.
The latest rumored federal budget proposal aims to cut the FDA’s funding by 17%, offload all routine food inspections to the states, and suspend the Proficiency Testing Program — the one thing that kept our labs from guessing which bacteria might be swimming in your salad.
Sound bad? Oh, it gets worse.
🥬 A Real-Life Outbreak. No Real-Life Warning.
In November, an E. coli outbreak linked to romaine lettuce spread across 15 states, sent a 9-year-old into kidney failure, hospitalized dozens, and killed one person.
And the FDA?
Said nothing.
According to an internal report (obtained by NBC News), the agency didn’t publicly name the companies involved because there was “no contaminated lettuce left” by the time they figured it out. And apparently, no reason to tell the public either. Because hey—what’s a deadly outbreak without a little mystery?
🔬 Quality Control? More Like Crowd Control.
Also suspended: the Food Emergency Response Network’s Proficiency Testing Program—the nationwide quality assurance system ensuring labs don’t mistake Campylobacter for camomile tea.
Why? Oh, just massive HHS staff cuts—up to 20,000 employees gone, including QA officers and microbiologists. But don’t worry, your gut will definitely notice the difference.
🏛️ Delegating Food Safety Like a Group Project
The plan is to let states take over food inspections entirely. Because if there’s one thing state governments have right now, it’s excess bandwidth, trained microbiologists, and extra money.
Steven Grossman of the Alliance for a Stronger FDA summed it up nicely: this idea only works if the states get more funding, more infrastructure, and more people.
Spoiler: They won’t.
🧬 While We’re At It—Let’s Gut the CDC and NIH Too
The same budget also proposes to:
Slash the CDC’s budget from $9 billion to $5 billion.
Cut the NIH’s funding nearly in half—from $48.5 billion to $27.3 billion.
Because why invest in preventing disease when you can livestream its spread?
🔚 From The Jungle to Jenga
A century ago, we created the FDA to protect the public from unregulated, unsafe food. Today, we’re tearing it down in the name of “efficiency.”
And if you think this won’t affect you, just wait until that prepackaged salad you grabbed for lunch turns your kidneys into a science fair project.
🎙️ Listen to the full breakdown on the latest episode of Dr. Simpson Unfiltered MD