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Carlos Osorio

An earlier version of this editorial omitted a recent reorganization of the Food and Drug Administration's food division, which went into effect Oct. 1. This version has been updated.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s intended nominee for health and human services secretary, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/11/15/rfk-jr-views-conspiracies-false-claims/" target=_blank>claims that</a> the agencies overseeing the nation’s health are conspiring with the food industry to “poison” the American public, and he intends to fire hundreds of government workers he believes are complicit in the scheme. Hidden in Mr. Kennedy’s conspiracist rhetoric is a valid point: The federal agencies tasked with regulating food manufacturers — especially the Food and Drug Administration — are ineffective and too deferential to industry interests.

Yet Mr. Kennedy is exactly the wrong person to overhaul them.

For decades, the culture of federal food regulation has been one of paralyzing caution. The reason is twofold: First, nutrition science is far more complicated than critics such as Mr. Kennedy like to admit, making swift, evidence-based decision-making difficult. And second, the FDA’s food division, with <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44576" target=_blank>a little more than $1 billion</a> at its disposal (most of which covers food safety inspections), is hopelessly outgunned by the <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/food-service-industry/market-segments/#:~:text=A%20Large%20and%20Growing%20Market&text=In%202019%2C%20the%20combined%20foodservice,accounting%20for%20about%20%24360%20million." target=_blank>almost $2 trillion food industry</a> and its legions of scientists and lawyers. The FDA spends <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/rfk-jrs-no-1-hurdle-take-unhealthy-food-money-rcna180365" target=_blank>about $25 million</a> to address food nutrition and chronic diseases.

The result: It takes years — sometimes decades — for the FDA to enact meaningful changes. The agency has used its powers to issue big industry mandates only once in its history, when it banned trans fats in 2015. But that achievement happened <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/6/17/8793937/why-fda-banned-trans-fats" target=_blank>more than a decade after</a> studies made it clear that trans fats were clogging Americans’ arteries and causing heart attacks. More recently, the FDA provoked fury for <a href="https://www.politico.com/interactives/2022/fda-fails-regulate-food-health-safety-hazards/" target=_blank>its failure to regulate</a> the infant formula market, leading to recalls of contaminated products and a severe supply crunch in 2022. It has also struggled to devise standards for agricultural water, leading to preventable outbreaks of food-borne illnesses in produce.

A firing binge at the nation’s health agencies wouldn’t fix any of these problems. In fact, should Mr. Kennedy cultivate a toxic work environment — either by gutting his workforce or pressuring employees to ignore scientific evidence running counter to his personal views — he will risk triggering an exodus of expert regulators to industry jobs, the opposite of what he’s trying to accomplish.

Real reform would start by surging resources to the Food and Drug Administration to carry out its mission, as leaders at the agency <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2022/03/14/commissioner-califf-needs-to-put-the-f-back-in-fda/" target=_blank>have advocated for years</a>. This would follow the success of the agency’s drug division, which experienced an <a href="https://www.thirdway.org/primer/ten-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-fda-user-fee-reauthorizations" target=_blank>influx of revenue in the 1990s</a> thanks to the introduction of industry user fees and improved its capacity to review drug applications in a timely manner.

But it would not be enough for congressional appropriators simply to cough up more money. Greater investment would be wasted if it were not paired with reforms to simplify FDA oversight and reduce duplication of responsibilities. Although the FDA regulates about <a href="https://www.fda.gov/media/176816/download" target="_blank">75 percent</a> of the food supply, the Agriculture Department regulates the rest, and identifying where each product falls is <a href="https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/improving-fdas-food-safety-program-choosing-practical-solutions" target="_blank">a bureaucratic nightmare</a>. (The FDA, for example, oversees shell eggs; the USDA oversees all other egg products.)

The FDA itself recently implemented a reorganization of the offices responsible for devising food safety policies and enforcing them, combining them into a unified Human Foods Program. It also created a senior position, a deputy commissioner for human foods, to oversee its operations, which will help streamline the agency’s work.

A <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/10/baby-formula-fda-break-up/" target=_blank>more dramatic idea</a> would be to break the FDA into two separate agencies — one to oversee food and another to oversee drugs — so that one division doesn’t pull attention from the other. Such restructuring would be difficult and require some trade-offs. The FDA’s food and drug divisions share inspection resources, which would have to be split between them. But the payoff would be a nimbler regulatory body capable of tackling big-picture food health issues, such as ultraprocessed foods.

Mr. Kennedy’s aversion to evidence-based policymaking suggests he’s ill-suited for this complicated task. But it would be wrong to dismiss the idea that the FDA needs to change. The challenge exists, and it requires a serious, science-informed response.

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