On Wednesday, the FDA issued a recall for some blueberry and mixed berry products for possible E. coli contamination. This comes on a the heels of the well-publicized Cyclospora outbreak tied to lettuce and a variety of other foodborne issues.

There has been a troubling rise in foodborne illnesses in the United States this year.

Between 2021 and 2025, the US Food and Drug Administration investigated an average of about 25 foodborne illness outbreaks each year. This year, the agency has already posted 20 investigations and says work remains active for 18 foodborne illness clusters.
The FDA posted a dozen foodborne illness outbreak investigations within the past two months alone.

But the number of cases, rather than the number of investigations, is where this year really stands out.

There have been about 10,500 cases of foodborne illness associated with outbreaks so far this year, according to data from the FDA and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s seven times higher than the annual average of about 1,500 cases between 2021 and 2025.

More than 9,000 of those cases are due to the Cyclospora outbreak; however, even if you exclude the Cyclospora cases, the nation seems on pace for more cases than the average of the last five years.

There have been more than 1,000 cases of illness associated with outbreaks beyond the cyclospora outbreak so far in 2026, FDA data shows. With nearly four months left in the year, this puts the US on track to surpass the average annual case count from the past five years — in addition to the massive cyclospora outbreak.

It is hard not to place a significant portion of the blame on staff and funding reductions by the federal government.

Under a Biden-era reorganization, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cut millions of dollars for state-level food inspections, effective this year. Inspections of facilities were not keeping up with Congressional directives; the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report in Jan. 2025 urging the FDA to “strengthen inspection efforts to protect the U.S. food supply.” And advocates were concerned because major parts of the landmark 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act—including rules that farmers must monitor the water they spray on vegetables for manure—were being delayed or rolled back.

And it has only gotten worse under President Donald Trump, particularly with the infamous DOGE bloodletting and hiring of health luminaries like RFK Jr.

In March of 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services announced its workforce would be reduced by roughly 20% with 10,000 being laid off and about 10,000 resigning or retiring. "In a press release, the department said that it would consolidate 28 divisions into 15 new divisions, calling the reorganization a 'Transformation to Make America Healthy Again.' " The FDA laid off somewhere between 2,500 and 3,500 workers, " including workers in the Human Foods Program, who are tasked with ensuring food safety, and scientists at a product safety lab in San Francisco that tests foods for bacteria."

Also gutted were communications staff at both FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who helped coordinate response to outbreaks and informed both consumers and businesses about recalled food. And hundreds of workers at CDC’s Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice lost their jobs; the organization coordinated government response to an outbreak of lead poisoning in 2023 linked to cinnamon applesauce pouches.
In the month before the layoffs, the Trump Administration also cut two longstanding committees focused on food safety: the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods and the National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection. The first was studying which babies might be at risk from the deadly bacteria found at an Abbott Nutrition infant formula plant; the second was looking at ways to use technology to improve food safety inspections.

Meanwhile, the Department of Health and Human Services said the "restructuring" would save Americans $1.8 billion per year, and

the overhaul will implement the new HHS priority of ending America’s epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins. These priorities will be reflected in the reorganization of HHS.

The federal government claimed that the cuts did not impact FDA inspectors; however, there is reason to believe 170 workers were cut from the FDA's Office of Inspections and Investigations.

Food safety advocates and various qualified expert doctors began warning that food safety would suffer, and people would get sick and people would die as a result of these cuts. Oops. At least we may soon have easier access to peptides and, in some states, raw milk products.

Oddly enough, soon after the initial cuts, RFK Jr. said that his department was rehiring 1,250 employees. And as of the end of June 2026, the FDA is trying to hire more than 2,000 people.

I am no expert, but it seems odd to have a bunch of untrained and unqualified people rush in to "restructure" and fire a bunch of people in an agency with very complex expertise and responsibilities (including food safety) only to hire thousands within 18 months.

As usual, it seems that Trump and his top staff imagined themselves as the smartest and most qualified people for the job. They alone could see the simple solutions to solving whatever problems they perceived, and they alone possessed the iron will and fortitude to make it happen.

Never mind that they lacked the relevant knowledge, expertise, and training. Never mind that they did not seem to consider that things might be more complicated than they imagined and that the systems they perceive as broken, unnecessarily complicated, and bloated might actually be the way they are for a reason.

The problems are simple, and so are the solutions. All we needed were smart, determined people to come in and quickly fix everything that had bewildered the deep state, lazy bureaucrats, and gutless members of the mono-party for years or even decades. The American people would get healthier and prosper.

But, also as usual, we get to see that Trump and his gang are little different than overconfident teenagers who think the world is simple and that they have it all figured out. It is easy for them to denigrate something as seriously flawed and easily fixable when on the outside, but once they are the ones in charge, the rest of us can see just how overconfident and out of their depth they are. Anybody who is not a member of the Trump cult or a Republican partisan zombie can see it.

And the rest of us must pay the price for their unbridled arrogance and hubris.