The head of the Food and Drug Administration’s food division resigned on Monday after stating widespread cuts across the agency will make it challenging to meet the Trump administration’s desired changes, according to a report.
Jim Jones cited the termination of 89 staffers in the food division, criticizing the layoffs over the weekend as “indiscriminate,” Bloomberg News reported Monday evening.
“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,” he wrote in his resignation letter to Acting FDA Commissioner Sara Brenner, according to the outlet.
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Jones said it would be “fruitless for me to continue in this role” because of the Trump administration’s “disdain for the very people” needed to make the changes it wants.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to Jones’ resignation, saying some “bureaucrats” are resistant to the “mandate delivered by the American people” in an email to Bloomberg News.
“President Trump is only interested in the best and most qualified people who are also willing to implement his America First Agenda on behalf of the American people,” she told the outlet. “It’s not for everyone, and that’s okay.”
The staffers who lost their jobs over the weekend include employees with “highly technical expertise in nutrition, infant formula, food safety response,” Jones said in his letter, noting that 10 terminated staffers were responsible for reviewing potentially unsafe ingredients in food.
Jones led a successful push to ban red dye No. 3, which had its authorization revoked by the FDA last month while former President Joe Biden was still in office.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as the Health and Human Services secretary on Thursday after running a “Make America Healthy Again” campaign with Trump.
Trump has nominated Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary to lead the FDA, although he has not yet been confirmed.
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