A seafood company failed to follow federal safety rules to prevent potential botulism contamination. A business was hawking dietary supplements with the misleading claim that they’d cure, treat or prevent disease. A fresh sprouts producer didn’t take adequate precautions against contamination.
The Food and Drug Administration laid out these inspection findings in warning letters, accusing the companies of committing “significant violations” of federal laws, according to an FDA staff member who described the letters to NBC News.
But the public doesn’t know about any of this, after the federal workers responsible for reviewing the food safety letters before they’re posted online were fired, the current FDA staff member and a former FDA employee told NBC News.
That review process ground to a halt after the Trump administration’s mass layoffs of federal health workers in early April, which gutted the teams responsible for reviewing public records and redacting any confidential information, according to the current and former FDA employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to share internal details.
Since then, the publication of more than a dozen food safety warning letters has been stalled, they said.
The FDA responded to questions with a statement that didn’t address the publication of warning letters. The agency “remains fully committed to transparency, accountability, and the protection of public health,” the statement said. The FDA added that it is continuing to conduct inspections, enforcement and oversight “to ensure consumer safety.”
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The FDA often issues warning letters after initially flagging its concerns to a company and determining the company’s response was inadequate. The agency typically gives the company a few weeks to respond to the letter, and, after an internal review, the letters are publicly posted on the FDA website.
The letters are one of the agency’s major enforcement tools — and one of the few windows into a company’s food safety record available to the public. The letters can make headlines and are especially important in alerting retailers to serious food safety violations that could put the public at risk, safety advocates said.
“It’s an indication that something has gone wrong — it’s not just a normal part of the inspection process. You get a warning letter when there’s a real problem,” said Thomas Gremillion, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, an advocacy group. “There are people you’d expect to use this information to protect the public.”
The FDA also uses warning letters to pressure companies to take action after the agency’s initial attempts have failed. Last June, for instance, the FDA sent a warning letter to Dollar Tree, the discount retail chain, for failing to pull lead-tainted applesauce pouches from its shelves, even after a national recall of the product. (Dollar Tree denied this, saying in a statement that it “took immediate action” on the recall and “will continue to cooperate with FDA.”)
In recent days, the FDA has rehired some of the staff who worked on public records at the agency, according to two former employees. The agency has also continued to publish warning letters related to drugs and tobacco products, as well as one related to imported food that was issued by a separate FDA division that was spared from deep staff cuts, the former workers said.
But even before the mass layoffs in April, staffers said there was a backlog in posting warning letters related to food safety.
Since the week of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, no warning letters to U.S. food manufacturers have been posted publicly, FDA records show.
The last published letter, posted on Jan. 21, detailed unsanitary conditions that the FDA found in a Utah-based bread factory: Inspectors described more than 50 live insects inside an ingredient bin, apparent insect trails on the floor, inadequate employee hygiene and debris on bread slicers, among other safety violations. The company told NBC News it had addressed the FDA’s concerns and strengthened its food safety practices.
