What makes this government shutdown different

— OPINION —

Government shutdowns have always undermined food safety. USDA inspectors, with starting salaries around $40,000, must work without pay. Many FDA inspectors are furloughed and the agency suspends its routine inspections of food facilities, assigning a skeleton crew inspectorate to conduct solely “for cause inspections.” In all likelihood, the diminished and distracted inspection presence results in illnesses caused by food safety hazards that might have otherwise been detected and addressed. 

That is true today as well. But the circumstances leading up the current federal funding impasse have raised the stakes significantly.

Unlike previous shutdowns, this one takes place amidst an unprecedented withdrawal of support for the nation’s state and local public health infrastructure. According to a 2022 report by the National Association of County & City Health Officials (NACCHO), federal money — mostly CDC grants — accounted for 55 percent of local health department budgets. In fiscal year 2023, the CDC paid out $14.9 billion to states and local jurisdictions. But earlier this year, the Trump Administration
announced that it was rescinding $11.4 billion in appropriated CDC funding to states. The leader of Alabama’s Department of Public Health, which lost $190 million in federal funding, explained that the cut: “doesn’t just mean fewer dollars flowing or smaller programs — it also means cuts to a lot of staff.” 

The Administration has framed its rescission of congressionally appropriated funding as a targeted attack on outdated COVID-19 funding and “woke” priorities like research into vaccine hesitancy, LGBTQ populations and supporting HIV prevention. But the scale of the cuts will inevitably degrade public health infrastructure more broadly. Notably, back in July the CDC “quietly scaled back” the scope of the foodborne illnesses it will expect state and local partners to report under its Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet), in recognition of funding constraints. FoodNet partners have been instrumental in detecting many nationwide outbreaks, such as the cluster of Listeria infections linked to Boar’s Head deli meats last year that killed 10 people and sickened dozens more. Now, many of these partners will stop tracking and reporting on Listeria and five other pathogens previously included in FoodNet, focusing solely on Salmonella and E.coli. 

This is troubling because, even more than food safety inspections, foodborne illness surveillance requires government to play a primary role. Food companies have a financial incentive to keep their facilities clean and avoid lawsuits from customers made ill by their products. By contrast, there’s no money in tracking foodborne illnesses and investigating their epidemiology. Yet this surveillance activity plays an essential — the most essential according to some experts — role in keeping food safe.

This shutdown presents a more ominous threat to food safety because the assault on public health preceding it has made measuring food safety risk harder. With fewer government officials working to ensure that foodborne illness is reported, sharing and analyzing data, interviewing case patients, and conducting epidemiological investigations, we may be blind to what furloughed government inspectors should have caught, until the toll on consumers has grown to crisis proportions. The result could be an even further deterioration of consumer confidence in the safety of the food supply from new lows set in August. 

The path forward, however, is unclear. The Administration has withheld $410 billion (nearly a quarter of total discretionary outlays) since taking office. Congress could end the shutdown tomorrow, and appropriate new funding for public health and food safety, but doing so would offer little assurance that the money reaches state and local health departments. The solution, according to tens of thousands of federal workers who wrote to Democratic members of Congress earlier this week, is to “refuse to support any budget that does not rightfully return the power of the purse to Congress and ensure any and all appropriated funds are spent on our critical public services.” According to the workers, “we will willingly forego paychecks in the hopes of preserving the programs we have devoted our lives to administering.”

The federal workers’ willingness to sacrifice sends a powerful message, and further distinguishes the current shutdown from those of the past. The message may fall on deaf ears in Congress, but consumers should take note. Food safety protections, and the public health infrastructure that undergirds those protections, have long enjoyed support across the political spectrum. There is no reason that should change now.

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