Publisher Health

The Trump administration halted some food testing and shut down a committee studying bacteria in infant formula. Earlier funding cutbacks under the Biden administration now threaten state labs and inspectors.In the last few years, foodborne pathogens have had devastating consequences that alarmed the public. Bacteria in infant formula sickened babies. Deli meat ridden with listeria killed 10 people and led to 60 hospitalizations in 19 states. Lead-laden applesauce pouches poisoned young children.In each outbreak, state and federal officials connected the dots from each sick person to a tainted product and ensured the recalled food was pulled off the shelves.Some of those employees and their specific roles in ending outbreaks are now threatened by Trump administration measures to increase government efficiency, which come on top of cuts already being made by the Food and Drug Administration’s chronically underfunded food division.Like the food safety system itself, the cutbacks and new administrative hurdles are spread across an array of federal and state agencies.At the Food and Drug Administration, freezes on government credit card spending ordered by the Trump administration have impeded staff members from buying food to perform routine tests for deadly bacteria. In states, a $34 million cut by the F.D.A. could reduce the number of employees who ensure that tainted products — like tin pouches of lead-laden applesauce sold in 2023 — are tested in labs and taken off store shelves. F.D.A. staff members are also bracing for further Trump administration personnel reductions.And at the Agriculture Department, a committee studying deadly bacteria was recently disbanded, even as it was developing advice on how to better target pathogens that can shut down the kidneys. Committee members were also devising an education plan for new parents on bacteria that can live in powdered infant formula. “Further work on your report and recommendations will be prohibited,” read a Trump administration email to the committee members.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Three deaths are being investigated as part of a listeria outbreak linked to desserts supplied to NHS hospitals and care homes.

5 hours ago

Arguments about benefits always revolve around a single concept: fairness.

5 hours ago

The health secretary has suggested allowing the virus to spread, so as to identify birds that may be immune. Such an experiment would be disastrous, scientists say.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, has an unorthodox idea for tackling the bird flu bedeviling U.S. poultry farms. Let the virus rip.Instead of culling birds when the infection is discovered, farmers “should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it,” Mr. Kennedy said recently on Fox News.He has repeated the idea in other interviews on the channel.Mr. Kennedy does not have jurisdiction over farms. But Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, also has voiced support for the notion.“There are some farmers that are out there that are willing to really try this on a pilot as we build the safe perimeter around them to see if there is a way forward with immunity,” Ms. Rollins told Fox News last month.Yet veterinary scientists said letting the virus sweep through poultry flocks unchecked would be inhumane and dangerous, and have enormous economic consequences.“That’s a really terrible idea, for any one of a number of reasons,” said Dr. Gail Hansen, a former state veterinarian for Kansas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

30 minutes ago

1 hour ago

4 hours ago

Dozens of medical and scientific studies are ending or at risk of ending, leaving researchers scrambling to find alternative funding.Cancer researchers examining the use of artificial intelligence to detect early signs of breast cancer. Pediatricians tracking the long-term health of children born to mothers infected with the coronavirus during pregnancy. Scientists searching for links between diabetes and dementia.All these projects at Columbia University were paid for with federal research grants that were abruptly terminated following the Trump administration’s decision to cut $400 million in funding to Columbia over concerns regarding the treatment of Jewish students.Dozens of medical and scientific studies are ending, or at risk of ending, leaving researchers scrambling to find alternative funding. In some cases, researchers have already started informing study subjects that research is suspended.“Honestly, I wanted to cry,” said Kathleen Graham, a 56-year-old nurse in the Bronx, upon learning that the diabetes study she had participated in for a quarter of a century was ending.At Columbia’s medical school, doctors said they were in shock as they received notice that their funding was terminated. Some expressed resignation, while others sought a stopgap solution and asked whether the university could fund some of the staff on the projects in the short term, according to interviews with five doctors or professors who had been affected.“The most immediate need is to bridge in the short term and figure out what the longer-term plans are,” said Dr. Dawn Hershman, the interim chief the division of hematology and oncology at Columbia’s medical school. “That’s what is being worked out.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.