• The FDA has suspended its quality control program for testing milk and dairy products.
• This decision follows job cuts of 20,000 employees in the Department of Health and Human Services.
• Proficiency testing for Grade "A" raw milk and several other programs have been impacted.
• The FDA aims to evaluate alternative approaches for testing in the upcoming fiscal year.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has suspended a quality control program for the testing of fluid milk and dairy products, attributed to capacity issues stemming from significant job cuts within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). According to an internal email from the FDA’s Division of Dairy Safety, effective Monday, the agency can no longer provide the necessary laboratory support for proficiency testing and data analysis for Grade “A” raw milk and finished products, which are known to meet the highest sanitary standards, according to Newsweek, HuffPost, and The Hill.

The suspension of the FDA’s proficiency testing program follows a broader scale of employment reductions at HHS, where roughly 20,000 positions have been eliminated as part of the Trump administration's efforts to streamline the federal workforce. While previous announcements claimed that food safety inspectors would be shielded from job cuts, this recent development contradicts those assertions as testing programs for pathogens, including Cyclospora, and testing for bird flu, have also been suspended, according to HuffPost and The Hill.

The FDA confirmed in its correspondence that it is actively "evaluating alternative approaches" for future testing and will keep all participating laboratories updated as new information becomes available. The cuts to HHS have sparked wide criticism, particularly as the agency also proposed a budget reduction of $40 billion for various health programs, indicating the administration’s focus on reducing federal expenditure at the cost of public health protections, according to Newsweek and The Hill.