Top FDA food safety official's resignation letter warns firings will backfire on RFK Jr.

by Alexander Tin
February 20, 2025

The top official in charge of food safety and nutrition at the Food and Drug Administration resigned this week, protesting the dozens of scientists and other health officials now being let go across the agency's foods program.

In his resignation letter, James Jones warned that the "indiscriminate" cuts would add "one more roadblock" to the "Make America Healthy Again" agenda outlined by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

"They included staff with highly technical expertise in nutrition, infant formula, food safety response and even 10 chemical safety staff hired to review potentially unsafe ingredients in our food supply," Jones wrote in his letter, which was dated Feb. 17.

Jones said that at least 89 of his recently hired staff had been cut across the agency's human foods program. News of the resignation was previously reported by the food industry publication Food Fix.