Regulatory & Policy

FDA's Top Food Safety Official Resigns After 89 Staff Fired in DOGE Cuts

VeriFoods · February 20, 2025 · 7 min read

Jim Jones, the FDA's first Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods, resigned on February 17, 2025, after the Trump administration fired 89 staffers from the agency's Human Foods Program. Ten of those 89 were chemical safety reviewers responsible for evaluating whether food ingredients are safe to eat, according to Food Safety Magazine. In his resignation letter, Jones warned that the cuts would sabotage the very food safety reforms the administration claims to support.

The firings were ordered by DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, as part of sweeping federal cost-cutting measures. They came just four days after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services in a 52-48 Senate vote and signed an executive order establishing the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission, according to Food Safety Magazine.

Jones did not leave quietly. He wrote that he had been "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," but that the administration's "disdain for the very people" needed to carry out that agenda made it "fruitless for me to continue," as reported by Food Safety Magazine.

The Man Who Banned Red Dye No. 3

Jones was not a bureaucratic figurehead. He was a career scientist and former top regulatory official at the EPA who had led the FDA's ban on Red Dye No. 3 in January 2025, just weeks before his departure, according to CBS News and Food Safety Magazine. The Human Foods Program he oversaw had been officially reorganized in October 2024 to improve food safety after the 2022 infant formula crisis that sickened and killed babies across the country, according to Food Safety Magazine.

His resignation removed the person most directly responsible for overseeing the safety of the American food supply at the exact moment the administration was publicly promising to make that food supply healthier.

10 Chemical Safety Reviewers Gone

The number that matters most is not 89. It is 10.

Of the 89 staffers fired from the Human Foods Program, 10 were chemical safety reviewers, according to Food Safety Magazine. These are the scientists who evaluate whether food ingredients, additives, and chemicals that come into contact with food are safe. They review petitions, analyze toxicology data, and make the recommendations that determine which chemicals stay in the food supply and which get pulled.

Without them, the FDA's ability to act on food chemical safety concerns is severely diminished. New petitions to ban or restrict questionable food additives will move slower or not at all. Ongoing reviews of chemicals already flagged for concern could stall indefinitely.

According to CBS News, many of the firings occurred without supervisory warning. HR letters were emailed directly to staff, bypassing their managers entirely. Some termination letters were later rescinded for employees deemed essential, but the damage to morale and institutional capacity was already done.

A Coalition United in Alarm

The response from consumer advocacy organizations was swift and unusually unified. Groups that sometimes disagree on the specifics of food policy came together to condemn the firings.

Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group called Jones' departure "a huge step backward for the FDA and for the safety of our food," as reported by FoodNavigator-USA.

Brian Ronholm of Consumer Reports said "the Make America Health Again platform is a hollow one, as inadequate resources undercuts its goals and objectives," according to the same FoodNavigator-USA report.

Peter Lurie of the Center for Science in the Public Interest was more blunt. He said the layoffs "make a mockery" of MAHA by "arbitrarily decimating" public health staff, comparing it to performing "surgery with a hatchet instead of scalpel," according to FoodNavigator-USA.

Industry trade groups also sounded alarms. The Consumer Brands Association, the Institute of Food Technologists, and the Council for Responsible Nutrition all emphasized the need for adequate FDA resources, according to FoodNavigator-USA. When consumer advocates and food industry lobbying groups agree that something has gone wrong, the situation is serious.

The Replacement: A Lawyer, Not a Scientist

Jones' replacement is Kyle Diamantas, a regulatory attorney from the law firm Jones Day in Miami, according to Food Safety Magazine. Diamantas was named Acting Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods effective February 28, 2025. He holds a law degree from the University of Florida and has over 10 years of experience advising food and life sciences clients on regulatory compliance, enforcement, and rulemaking.

Diamantas has authored articles on topics including the FDA's Human Foods Program, PFAS, food traceability, and labeling regulations. His background includes work on infant formula and consumer packaged goods.

But he is not a scientist. He is not a toxicologist. He has no prior government food safety experience. The person now overseeing the FDA's evaluation of chemical safety in the American food supply is a private-sector attorney whose career has been spent advising the companies that the FDA is supposed to regulate. That is not a disqualifying fact on its own, but combined with the loss of 10 chemical safety reviewers, it raises direct questions about whether the agency has the capacity and expertise to protect consumers.

The MAHA Contradiction

On February 13, 2025, the Trump administration confirmed RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary with a mandate to make American food healthier. Four days later, the same administration's cost-cutting initiative fired 89 people from the program responsible for doing exactly that.

Jones addressed this contradiction directly in his resignation letter. He described the firings as "one more roadblock" to the MAHA agenda, according to CBS News. He wrote that "the foods program staff at FDA is the envy of the world in its technical, professional and ethical standards," and that the administration was dismantling the very workforce it would need to achieve its stated goals.

The MAHA Commission executive order, signed the same day RFK Jr. was confirmed, is supposed to address diet-related chronic disease and chemical exposure in food. But the scientists who review food chemicals, the analysts who assess risk, and the staff who process petitions to remove dangerous ingredients are the ones who just lost their jobs.

What This Means for Your Food

When the FDA lacks the staff to review food chemicals, the effects are not abstract. Fewer reviewers means fewer reviews. Petitions to ban or restrict questionable food additives take longer. Emerging safety concerns get less attention. The pipeline of regulatory action slows to a crawl.

The Red Dye No. 3 ban that Jones led in January 2025 took over 35 years from the time the science was clear to the time the FDA acted. That timeline already represented a failure of regulatory speed. With 10 fewer chemical safety reviewers, the next Red Dye No. 3 situation could take even longer to resolve.

This is why independent testing and consumer tools matter more now than they did a month ago. When government oversight is weakened, consumers need alternative sources of information about what is in their food. Barcode-scanning apps like VeriFoods allow you to check whether products contain flagged additives and contaminants that the FDA may no longer have the staff to adequately monitor.

The gap between what the government promises and what the government delivers on food safety is growing. Jones saw it from the inside and decided he could not bridge it. His resignation letter is a warning, not just a farewell. The question now is whether anyone in a position of authority is listening.