The head of the Food and Drug Administration has repeatedly claimed in recent interviews that no scientists have been laid off at his agency, but one of the scientists in a food safety lab closed by the FDA’s cuts claims he is either “blatantly lying” or “out of touch.”
“There were no layoffs of scientists or food inspectors,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary told CNN Wednesday. Makary previously stated in an April 17 interview with Megyn Kelly that “there were no cuts to scientists, reviewers, or inspectors.” Absolutely none.”
“That just made me so mad, that he said no scientists were cut,” said one laid-off FDA scientist, a chemist who had been with the agency for years.
Almost all of the scientists at the FDA’s food safety laboratories in San Francisco and Chicago received layoff notices this month, according to four laid-off chemists and microbiologists. The scientists, who were not authorized to speak publicly, spoke under the condition of anonymity.
The San Francisco lab, which opened during Trump’s first administration, was ramping up infant formula testing. Its closure has reduced the agency’s capacity to test baby formula by a quarter, just as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for increased testing, according to laid-off scientists.
“Do you know, and you’re clearly lying? Or do you not know, and you’re simply out of touch?” the chemist said of Makary’s remarks.
An FDA spokesperson stated that the labs were scheduled to be decommissioned by the agency prior to the reorganization by the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency and Kennedy, which resulted in the layoff. The spokesperson declined to address the disparity between Makary’s remarks and the layoffs.
Most of the employees at those labs have not returned to the building since April 1, when they packed their belongings.
The scientists, like other laid-off FDA employees, received a “reduction in force” notice informing them that they were being placed on leave and would be let go on June 2. The correspondence claimed that their “duties have been identified as either unnecessary or virtually identical to duties being performed elsewhere in the agency.”
For the time being, a few employees report that they have been asked to return to work for a few more weeks, but only to begin the process of closing their former labs and disposing of samples and supplies.
They were previously in charge of everything from researching the safety of new food processing techniques to inspecting food products for toxic metal contamination.
According to multiple FDA officials, scientists in the San Francisco lab were the only ones able to test for bird flu contamination in pet food within the agency’s network. According to a memo shared with CBS News and circulated among agency officials, the lab’s scientists were the only ones with the necessary expertise and specialized “biocontainment infrastructure” to conduct the testing.
Given the lab’s proximity to the region’s major agricultural producers, scientists there have also been in charge of major food safety investigations in recent years. Northern and Central California produce more than half of the United States’ fresh produce.
Multiple laid-off scientists described how outbreak investigators would frequently rush samples back to the lab for testing, forcing lab staff to work weekends and holidays.
“They received five or six samples per day. During the onion outbreak, onions were everywhere. “The entire lab smelled like onions,” one laid-off scientist in the San Francisco lab recalled of their work during the 2024 investigation into contaminated onions used in McDonald’s Quarter Pounders.
According to scientists and officials, the FDA recently spent tens of millions of dollars to relocate and update the San Francisco lab. It had a ribbon-cutting ceremony near the end of the first Trump administration.
At the time, FDA officials touted the lab as critical to a variety of food safety testing efforts. It had a lab that was metal-free, which was required for advanced research into products that could be contaminated with toxic heavy metals such as lead or cadmium.
The agency had also purchased new laboratory equipment to test food for unapproved color dyes that had been added to products, which could pose a safety risk.
“FDA scientists will be able to process samples of food and other products and detect dangerous components, like heavy metals, with extraordinary sensitivity: in the parts-per-trillion range,” Dr. Amy Abernethy, one of the agency’s top officials at the end of the first Trump administration, said at the lab’s reopening in 2019.
Scientists there were preparing to ramp up testing of baby formula as part of “Operation Stork Speed,” which Kennedy ordered earlier this year to increase checks for heavy metal contaminants. They were also working on establishing the ability to analyze the nutrients in baby formula, which only one other lab in the FDA’s network can do.
“We have a lot of brand new equipment sitting on the bench, ready to be used.” We must conduct extensive verification and validation before we can begin analysis. So we were in the midst of it. “Now, all of that brand-new equipment will go to waste,” said one laid-off scientist.
Multiple FDA scientists estimated that it would cost millions of dollars and months of work to formally close the lab, let alone transfer their workload to the agency’s remaining scientists.
“The other labs are overwhelmed with some samples because we are no longer doing the testing,” one laid-off scientist explained.