The FDA Conducted Just 5% of the Foreign Food Inspections It Was Supposed to Last Year

Plenty of Americans spent this past summer on the toilet thanks to the so-called diarrhea lettuce outbreak that sickened tens of thousands, hospitalized at least 570 and killed two people. The cyclosporiasis outbreak was linked to iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms at a facility in Mexico that was last inspected seven years ago, according to a damning new report from the Washington Post. The FDA is tasked with conducting inspections of foreign facilities to ensure that the food being imported is safe to eat. The Washington Post reports that there were already long term issues plaguing the agency’s ability to inspect food in other countries, but it’s gotten so much worse ever since billionaire Elon Musk took a chainsaw to the federal government in 2025 with his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The FDA’s foreign food inspections plummeted during the covid-19 pandemic, recovered in 2023, then dropped sharply again thanks to DOGE. The Post found that the FDA conducted just 1,024 foreign food inspections in 2025, just 5% of the quota set by Congress. In June of this year, the FDA conducted about 84 inspections, according to the newspaper’s analysis of a one-year rolling average, compared to 103 inspections in June 2024. There were 154 inspections in June 2019. Again, the Post is quick to note that this is a long term problem that can’t be solely blamed on DOGE. Funding for food safety hasn’t be a priority for Congress, though President Barack Obama signed legislation in 2011 that was supposed to increase food inspections. Instead, we’ve gone in the wrong direction during recent years, thanks to both the pandemic and President Donald Trump’s efforts to cripple the federal government. Foreign food inspections cost money. In fact, each inspection costs an average of $38,700 according to a Government Accountability Office report from 2025. Domestic inspections can cost anywhere from about $14,000 to $28,000. These food inspections also require staff, something that the vandals of DOGE didn’t seem to grasp as they defended cuts last year while insisting they hadn’t actually fired any inspectors. What they did do, according to the Associated Press and ProPublica, was cut staff responsible for travel and budgets. If inspectors are required to do all of the administrative work required for things like hotels, flights, securing visas and more, that gives them less time for doing the work of inspections. Americans have been experiencing a wave of recalls in 2026, including everything from glass in the popsicles to 19 million eggs recalled for salmonella. And while it’s good when things are being recalled because it means that problems are being identified, the system works much better when the problems are identified at the source before those products are sold on U.S. shelves. Another headline-grabbing outbreak this year involved jalapeno peppers from Mexico likely infected with salmonella. About 500 people were sickened and the FDA didn’t send anyone to investigate, according to the Washington Post. Elon Musk (L) holds a chainsaw alongside Argentine President Javier Milei during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on February 20, 2025. © Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images All of these high-profile problems have destroyed the confidence Americans have in the safety of the food sold at U.S. grocery stores. Just 65% of Americans are somewhat or very confident that their food is safe, according to new polling from Gallup, the lowest on record. The number was 81% as recently as 2019. When Americans are asked specifically about their confidence in the U.S. government to keep their food safe, the numbers are even lower. Just 47% of Americans say they have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of confidence in the government to keep their food safe. That’s down from 68% in 2019 and 85% in 2004. It’s not a problem that can be solved overnight, especially after roughly 300,000 federal workers were purged by DOGE across the entire government. You can’t simply hire back that kind of institutional knowledge as many people have left for other lines of work, as you’d expect them to do. But without major reforms, the U.S. risks becoming a much sicker nation than it was even a decade ago.