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Jim Jones, the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s food division, resigned on Monday, citing what he called “indiscriminate” layoffs that would make it “fruitless for him to continue.”
In his resignation letter, Mr. Jones estimated that 89 people of the 2,000 in his division were fired over the weekend, many of them freshly hired to do more in-depth work on chemical safety to protect the nation’s food supply.
“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,” Mr. Jones wrote in the letter submitted to Sara Brenner, the acting commissioner of the F.D.A.
But the Trump administration’s “disdain for the very people” who would do that work gave him no choice but to depart, he said.
Mr. Jones also singled out Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the newly appointed secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, for criticizing the F.D.A. as being too beholden to the industries it oversees and for vowing to to dismiss the agency’s nutrition staff.
“The secretary’s comments impugning the integrity of the food staff, asserting they are corrupt based on falsities, is a disservice to everyone,” Mr. Jones wrote in the letter.