Forked: MAHA drama as food fighters duke it out with anti-vaxxers
Theodore Ross and Helena Bottemiller Evich work through the tumultuous nomination process for Surgeon General. Donald Trump’s first nominee withdrew (questions about her medical and anti-vaxx credentials) and the newest one, Casey Means, has been branded a “Marxist tree hugger” by Laura Loomer. (Questions also remain about her anti-vaxxness). Conversation addresses the split within the groups backing HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – anti-Big Food versus anti-vaccine – “the big questions” about government being posed by the Trump administration; and in a sign of hope – MAHA members meet with public health experts and don’t hate each other.
TRANSCRIPT:
Teresa Cotsirilos: You’re listening to REAP/SOW, dispatches from the frontlines of food, farming, and the environment. I’m your host, Teresa Cotsirilos.
Casey Means: When I was 14, in six months I lost these extra 50 pounds I’d be carrying. So I was like, “oh, wow — food, if I learn about it and understand it? I can change my life.”
Teresa: That was doctor Casey Means, the Trump administration’s current nomination for surgeon general. Dr. Means is a fierce critic of our current medical systems and of Big Food — the multinational food conglomerates that aggressively market processed foods. She’s also a wellness influencer who makes money off of dietary supplements, has expressed some real skepticism about vaccines, and doesn’t have an active medical license.
There is a lot to unpack here, so welcome back to Forked — an insider’s look at the politics and policy that is turning the American food system on its head. In this episode, Helena Bottemiller Evich, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Food Fix, and FERN’s Editor-in-Chief Theodore Ross are unpacking the MAHA movement’s latest moves. I’ll let Theodore Ross take it from here.
Theodore Ross: Helena, welcome back. How are you?
Helena Bottemiller Evich: I’m doing well. How are you?
Theodore: I’m doing pretty well. It’s good to have you here to talk about food policy and all the ways in which we are forked in this country. Why don’t we just jump right into it? So, as you know, every episode we start with something called the double take, which is something that’s in the food policy news that just, like, makes your eyes kind of bug out because it’s so crazy — usually because it’s crazy bad.
So tell me what’s, the double take for this, for this episode?
Helena: So I think right now the entire internet is in a bit of a blaze about Trump’s pick for surgeon general, Casey Means. She so for those of you who don’t maybe know who Casey Means is, I guess by now probably we’ve all seen the headlines — but Casey is a, I guess I should say Dr. Means, is a Stanford-trained head,nose, and throat or ear, nose, and throat. I always get the …
Theodore: The former doctor, right? Shouldn’t we say former doctor?
Helena: She is, you still are an M.D. if you graduate from med school. But she did not finish her residency, her surgical residency, and she does not have an active medical license.
So, the pick, the surgeon general position, is often referred to as the nation’s doctor. So there’s a lot of criticism and heartburn about the fact that she doesn’t, she’s not a practicing physician.
Theodore: Let’s back up. Yeah, let’s walk through the whole, the whole mishegoss, as we say here in New York City.
This starts off with Donald Trump nominating somebody else for the surgeon general position. So why don’t we start there?
Helena: Oh, yeah, I don’t remember that lady’s name.
Theodore: Okay, so I can do that. Her name is Janette Nesheiwat, and she is, in fact, a doctor. And she was a senior official, or a director, I believe, for CityMD, the clinics, the national chain of clinics. And also, of course, because this is Donald Trump, she is a Fox News contributor, and he nominated her to be the surgeon general. And then right before she was supposed to speak to Congress and testify, she withdrew. And the reason why she, apparently, the reason why she withdrew was criticism from Laura Loomer, who didn’t find her sufficiently anti-vaccine enough during the pandemic.
While she was working for CityMD, Nesheiwat — and I hope I’m saying that even vaguely correct. I apologize — called the pandemic, the Covid vaccines, a gift from God, which, I don’t know, maybe a gift from the CDC, maybe a gift from the NIH. Maybe it’s a gift from Pfizer. Take your pick. But then later on she was a vocal opponent of vaccine mandates.
So she’s kind of in the middle on the vaccine spectrum, which is not good enough for somebody like Laura Loomer. She withdraws.
Helena: You should explain who Laura Loomer is.
Theodore: I think you should explain it.
Helena: Well, she’s a provocateur. Conspiratorial voice. Very prominent on social media.
Very close to President Trump. Has in the past gotten other very high-profile members of his administration fired. She is a force within MAGA world. I’ll leave it at that. So you can go and look at her socials and sort of figure out what she’s all about. But, yes. So the surgeon general, it’s — we should maybe just say generally not like.
it’s a symbolically important position, but it’s not a position that usually has a lot of policy sway. I mean, most people couldn’t name the last five surgeon generals or any of them. I mean, it’s just not usually a pick that there’s a lot of focus on, right?. Right. Like we, we care about …
Theodore: I’m seeing C. Everett Koop.
Helena: You just googled that, didn’t you?
Theodore: No, no, no. I remember him. You know, when I think of the surgeon general, I think of Dr. Everett Koop. That’s it. I don’t remember any other names. That’s the only one.
Helena: So, I mean, certainly there’s key moments in history, the surgeon general’s warning about smoking.
Like there’s certain moments, right, where the surgeon general — it’s not an unimportant position, but it’s not one that we usually have a lot of coverage of the nomination or confirmation of this position. Versus like FDA or cabinet-level positions like HHS, USDA tend to be more of a focus.
So the fact that we are all talking about the surgeon general pick right now is itself very unusual. So getting back to Casey Means, I think before we even talk about her medical record and why that has so many people upset, you should understand that the reason Means was chosen is that she is a key figure within the Make America Healthy Again movement, or MAHA, right?
If folks are still not familiar with that phrase, we’re going to keep reminding people what it is. But she is one of the most prominent voices within MAHA, she and her brother Calley Means, who is now not only a special government employee and White House adviser, but also a key adviser to RFK Jr. at HHS.
She and her brother cowrote a book called Good Energy that’s been on the New York Times bestseller list for a long time. They’ve been on Tucker Carlson, on Joe Rogan. I mean, they’ve done the whole podcast circuit, massively popular, a lot of following on social media, and they are really key voices in this whole movement that’s come about very quickly and has become sort of thrown into the mainstream in, like, the last eight months. So even though …
Theodore: But also controversial figures, right? So when you look at somebody like Casey Means, she is trained as a doctor, but then decided not to practice. She publishes this book, and it’s really all about …
Helena: Yeah, she rails against the medical system. I mean, she’s an anti-institutional pick through and through, like, the way she tells it is that she left her surgical residency, I think, six months before it was over. So we’re talking massive personal and financial investment in medical school, in surgical residency in a very good surgical residency.
She says that she became disillusioned with the medical system and wasn’t getting to the root cause of why patients were sick, and that just didn’t sit well with her. I haven’t actually read the book, but I think this is how they’ve explained the narrative a lot. We’ve seen some reporting recently that some of her colleagues at the time don’t agree that that’s why she left.
They said that she wa,s you know, crumbling under stress. I don’t know what actually happened there. I think, in some ways it doesn’t really matter to what we’re talking about now, which is, is she qualified for this job or not? From there, it’s not actually that she wrote the book first.
She cofounded a company called Levels, which is a tech company that is based on continuous glucose monitors. So basically measuring your blood sugar. I think they have an app, and it’s this program you can do. And it’s all about metabolic health. And a lot of people in the medical community don’t love this idea because they think tha continuous glucose monitors should be mostly used in people who have diabetes or other diabetes.
So, you know, I don’t know some of that gets a little bit, like, well ….
Theodore: But it’s not just the nature of the company specifically, right? It’s the idea that she is in this world of alternative healthcare …
Helena: Wellness.
Theodore: Treatments, wellness that make money.
Helena: It’s big wellness.
Theodore: So when you look at her brother Calley, he has a company called Truemed.
I spent a couple of minutes just poking around on his website to understand what Truemed is, and it’s this idea that you could use, via his company, your money from your HSA, your health insurance to pay for alternative treatments. And I’m going to read you …
Helena: Pre-tax dollars.. HSA, FSA, yup.
Theodore: So if you look on the website and you know, look, Casey Means is not her brother, but they are both in the government. They’re both pretty connected.
Helena: Casey has not been confirmed, but Calley Means is a special government employee and the cofounder of Truemed, just to clarify.
Theodore: Right. So you can use it for red light treatments. Saunas, cold plunges, workouts in the gym, and then supplements, supplements through, up the wazoo, quite frankly. And that’s also a technical term. You know, something called Sprayology, Wonderfeel, Winged Wellness. This, these are these two people, this brother and sister, they are high-level, serious responsible people, if Casey gets confirmed, ithin the U.S. government who do things like Winged Wellness and red light treatments. So that is, I don’t know if you call that controversial or surreal or something else, but that’s the context surrounding this stuff.
Helena: And I actually don’t think that’s what’s really getting attention here with Casey. I mean, somewhat it is, but [00:09:00] Casey Means, I keep using first names because I want to distinguish between Casey and Calley, but we should call them, you know, Dr. Means or, you know, former physician, former practicing physician Means. She has made a lot of controversial statements. Right. So I think that’s where there’s a lot more focus.
And I think she does do some affiliate codes around supplements personally. So we want to separate, too, like she’s not Truemed, but she definitely does promote certain supplements from her own platform, as well. But I think there’s been a lot more focus on some of her statements in the past. Like she’s really, she talks a lot about spirituality and being one with nature, and there’s a lot of almost mysticism around, like, connecting metabolic health and the Earth and like …
Theodore: Well, that brings us back to Laura Loomer, right? So Loomer , when she …
Helena: Lumer called her la “woo woo woman.”
Theodore: So what did she call her? She said first that she is a, she is a Marxist. She called it a Marxist. And then, I’m sorry, she’s a Marxist tree hugger. And then she tweeted: President Trump’s pick for us, for U.S. Surgeon General, Casey Means, said she prays to inanimate objects, communicates with spirit mediums, uses.
shrooms as plant medicines.
Helena: Which, by the way, that’s very popular. Psilocybin is very popular within MAHA, so that should not be news to anyone.
Theodore: And talks to trees. I talk to trees, too. I live in New York. Sometimes they get in my way. I have to say, get out of my way. You know, like none of these are, this is the thing. None of these are too bad.
Helena: Yeah. I think the spirituality parts, the communicating with nature. All of that is, it’s one of those things where I think individually there are a lot of people who’d be, yeah, like I feel connected to God in nature. Or they may identify with certain parts of it.
However, it’s very, very different for that kind of language to be coming from a surgeon general pick or the nation’s doctor. A lot of her views are just outside of modern medicine or traditional medicine, they just are. Being, you know, psilocybin is still illegal in most, or doing mushrooms of any kind is still illegal, in I think most places in the country or it’s federally illegal.
It’s not just that, but also she’s been a supporter of raw milk, which the federal government has long urged us to avoid consuming. And interstate shipment of raw milk is illegal in this country because of the risks of foodborne illness.
Theodore: And she’s pretty anti-vaccine.
Helena: She’s questioned the vaccine schedule. She’s not as overtly anti-vaccine as a lot of other advocates are. In fact, there’s a huge war within MAHA now because a lot of the anti-vaccine voices within MAHA are furious about this pick. They don’t think that Casey and Calley Means are sufficiently critical of vaccines, and so there’s a lot of infighting going on.
So she routinely questions the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule and says basically, we should be asking questions about this. I believe she’s also against vaccine mandates, so there is a little bit of — I hesitate to call it a moderate viewpoint, but it is sort of the in-between viewpoint where you’re not full-blown.I mean, some of the most ardent anti-vaccine advocates literally think that the Covid vaccines have killed millions of people. Without evidence, they think that, and they think they should be pulled right now. And I only know this because I’m now having to llearn about this world. Right? So that is not the viewpoint that has been shared by either of the Means siblings.
And so I think it’s important to kind of clarify that. So they’re kind of considered insufficiently anti-vaccine from that strain within MAHA, and then they’re also seen as too critical of vaccines or questioning or sort of raising doubt from the medical establishment, if that makes sense.
Theodore: That totally makes sense. And I think it gets at some of these continual difficulties of trying to understand what’s happening with food policy right now. I mean, if you go to look at, you know — Casey Means on her website has a “my health wishlist for the next administration.”
Helena: Yeah. And a lot of it’s lefty stuff actually, like break up the meatpacking industry.
Theodore: Break up the meat packing industry, reform crop subsidies, create incentives for healthy food.
Helena: Like Michael Pollan. This is like an omnivore’s dilemma policy thing. And even he’s into psilocybin now, right?
Theodore: He wrote a book about it. But then, right down there at the bottom, there is Reform the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which, you know, for me is, looking at themes of this, the idea that we find ourselves in this position of saying, well, she’s kind of a moderate, itit’s through the looking glass kind of logic, right?
Yes. Things could always be worse, right? We could have someone who is even more anti-vaccine than she is, but that does not make her a reasonable actor for this kind of a position. Do you agree, or am I overstating it?
Helena: Well, here’s what I see happening. Every single institution — so like hospitals, public health groups, registered dietitians, folks with all of this training, all this focus on credentials and evidence, I mean the scientific researchers.
That whole group, basically the entire medical system, is, like, no, hard no on this, right? They do not want to basically let a massive critic of the healthcare system and questioning all the institutions, you know, the public health establishment credits for all of these advances in getting rid of certain infectious diseases.
We do not want someone who wants to tear all that down. As the lead doctor, the nation’s doctor, they just, there is just fierce, fierce, fierce opposition to that. Now, if you look at the Trump administration, and Secretary Kennedy said as much, the reason she was chosen for this job is because she dropped out of her residency and is a massive critic of the healthcare system.
And so in some ways, the things she’s being criticized the most for are the reasons she was also chosen. So it’s going to be really interesting to see what happens here. I do think that much more of the anger about Kennedy’s approach to things and also all the cuts across FDA, CDC, NIH, USDA, I think all of that anger is going to come out a lot more towards Casey Means because, you know, Kennedy has already been confirmed. So I think there’s gonna be some more heartburn directed at her.
Theodore: Because of Kennedy’s success in getting into the vision. I think that’s a good point.
Helena: So I think it’s going to be interesting to see what happens, and it will be a test, I think, of where particularly Republicans are right now on MAHA.
They’re still pretty on board in terms of, like, they’re not publicly really pushing back. There’s been, you know, a few letters to the MAHA Commission basically saying, be science-based, but no one’s really coming out and being upset with MAHA. From the Republicans, from in terms of Republicans, lawmakersbecause they don’t want the blowback from this pretty potent political movement.
Theodore: They don’t want to get primaried.
Helena: They don’t want to get primaried, they don’t want to get moms flooding their, you know, their phones with phone calls, and they don’t wanna get dragged on social media. So, yeah, it’s gonna be really interesting to see what happens.
Theodore: I want to move on from this, but I want to make one last sort of footnote about the appointee, potential appointee before Meabs, which was, Janette Nesheiwat . One of the things I think is interesting about her, which — it does come up. I’m not breaking news here — is that she is the sister-in-law of now, former national security advisor Mike Waltz.
And there wasn’t that much distance between him being kicked over to the UN and her being asked to withdraw from this position as the surgeon general.,
Helena: I think there was also some controversy about where she actually went to med school. This is the thing though. I don’t usually pay attention to the surgeon general pick. When you were like, you know, the other woman was, I was like, I don’t … Because the reason I am now covering Casey Means is she has really strong views on food. Okay? So she’s been out there. We should also say this because we’re talking about food policy.
She is very in favor of only eating regenerative organic, which is a really small slice of the American food supply. She’s, you know, very outspoken against commonly used herbicides like glyphosate. She’s, you know, in many ways very, very radical compared to the food system that we have. And I don’t know if or whether she would still be espousing those views as surgeon general, if she’s confirmed.
But I kind of think that’s, again, why she was chosen. And it would be wild, because even 10, 15 years ago, I think about what the Republican pushback was against Michelle Obama, just having, not an organic garden on the South Lawn, but just a garden that didn’t, use synthetic pesticides, and the pesticide industry lost it.
They were, like, this is basically sending the wrong message about crop technology. I mean, they were really worked up about it, and now we’re looking at potentially having a surgeon general who’s like, glyphosate is a huge problem. Glyphosate is a massive pillar of the, you know, the food and agriculture system that we have.
And nothing. Crickets. It’s just a really, we are in such a wildly different place now than we were even a year ago.
Theodore: But the question is what comes of that? I think sometimes you look at someone like Casey Means and you say, look at how radically different she is. But the question is, what will she actually do?
Helena: And at EPA they’re deregulating, so yeah.
Theodore:. So I think there’s a comparison to be made to Kennedy himself. There was an op-ed in the New York Times recently, and the headline is “Kennedy Is Right About Chemicals*,” right?
Helena: Oh, yeah. I actually have that up. I haven’t read it yet from Julia Belluz. She’s great.
Theodore: Yeah. And it walks, but, well, I take some issue with the article.
Helena: I haven’t read it, but she’s, she’s great. You don’t like Julia Belluz? She’s great.
Theodore: I have no opinion on her one way or another.
Helena: She was Vox’s science writer for a long time.
Theodore: but I mean, she talks about the ways in which Kennedy is opposed to food dyes and the ways in which he’s opposed to chemicals in the food system, and chronic disease in such a way as if he’s actually doing something about those things. And she brings up the GRAS rule and how he is working on doing something about it. And then if you look at what Kennedy is actually doing …
Helena: Nothing with those things.
Theodore: It’s nothing.
Yeah. It’s nothing. So we’re sort of moving the frame of reference in a way that it’s pretty harmful …
Helena: We are pretty early still. So both things are correct — that it’s very early and also nothing has been done. They have said they are looking at tackling GRAS.
And, in fact, last week we were expecting an announcement on GRAS, and it never came. So I don’t know what happened there actually. And not a single, not a single food dye has been banned. Nothing has been put in the federal register. That said, food companies are under pressure to get rid of food dyes because West Virginia banned them.
And a whole bunch of other states are right behind West Virginia and California, lots of states are also banning them out of school food. And so, you know, it’s a weird situation where we are in a place where. synthetic food dyes in the U.S. are on their way out, regardless of what FDA does. But FDA has technically done nothing to, I mean, they’ve said we want them out by the end of 2026, but nothing has been banned. Even the ones that, the two, there’s two synthetic food dyes that they were, like, we’re going to revoke authorization of these immediately. These are the worst ones. RFK says they’re the worst ones. And I do think there’s evidence that’s concerning about these two, but they’re basically not used anymore. Like they’ve stopped. So, you know, well …
Theodore: But that’s what I think is important about these things. The idea is not to look at what Kennedy is doing or people in the administration is doing and saying, look at how radically different it is. We have to look at the results because it’s not like there were Democrats for years lining up and saying,man, food dyes are great. Obesity is great. Chronic disease is great. The proof’s in the pudding. The proof is what you actually do. Not what you say.
Helena: And I think this brings me to something I think that’s really important about MAHA. I mean, just in general, covering any administration, you have to separate the rhetoric from the actual actions, right? So much of what everyone gets worked up with about MAHA, especially critics, is about the rhetoric. And I’m not saying rhetoric doesn’t matter. These are government officialssaying, I mean RFK said that our food supply is poisoning us. And he said sugar is poison.
I’m not saying that that rhetoric doesn’t matter. It matters because that’s a big megaphone. That’s a bully pulpit you’re using to say things. But if you actually look at the actions, I think that’s what’s important. And nothing has been done to reduce sugar in school meals further than what the Biden administration had already.
Right. You know, we’ve never had added-sugars limits in the school meals program. Those are starting to take effect this year. They applied to a few products within the school meals. Yeah, I think like yogurt and cereal and a couple other things at first, and then they phase in.
And so, you know, it’s one thing to say these things, but I’m very focused on the actions. And I think also there’s a lot of folks who get really hung up on, you know, oh, this is a dumb idea or a dumb thing to say. And they kind of come at it. We’re fighting so much in the rhetoric. Yeah. It’s just so important to zoom in and be, like, okay, what has been done?
And then look at those actions, right? What is the result of that action?
Theodore: I agree
Helena: Because there’s so much noise right now, and so much of it’s on social media, and it’s like very — and, and I don’t blame anyone for being confused because the news changes all the time. They cut things and they undo it.
And I mean, it’s like, it’s so confusing. It’s confusing for me. And this is my job to like follow this stuff.
Theodore: Let’s talk about the things they’re doing. Let’s move on to our next segment, and that’s our Forks and Knives, which is just basically the state of play here, in food policy.
What do you think we should be talking about and thinking about?
Helena: Well, I think, I think the theme of sort of cuts and where this administration is actually changing the federal agencies and potentially changing the safety net. Those are the pieces of a puzzle that get way less coverage because we’re all focused on the rhetoric, right?
And also the infighting within MAHA, which I covered last week because that was super-newsworthy, that there was all this fighting over, you know, Casey Means as the pick for surgeon general. Which again, I normally wouldn’t even cover surgeon general. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever covered a surgeon general’s confirmation.
So there’s all this noise around that, but if you talk to certain folks within public health or Democrats or just people who have followed this stuff for a long time, there’s a lot of concern that everyone is missing kind of the real impact or the real changes that are happening.
And I think one of those things that’s being missed is right now there’s a big reconciliation process slowly kind of churning through Capitol Hill, and it’s very wonky and complicated. But the main gist of it is that Republicans want to extend the Trump tax cuts. They want to do trillions in tax cuts.
And so they’re trying to find ways to …
Theodore: Pay for that stuff. Pay for that.
Helena: I use pay for that because all of this math in Washington is very, kind of, magical and weird, and without going into it, paying for it is, on paper kind of, it needs to look like they’re paying for it. And so right now what’s being considered are pretty substantial cuts to programs like Medicaid, and SNAP is part of that.
So SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, still known to many folks as food stamps. And the House Agriculture Committee has been asked to come up with $230 billion in cuts over 10 years. And the assumption is that the most, if not all, of that would come from SNAP.
Now it’s really difficult, if not impossible, to cut that level without cutting benefits in some way. And so there we’re gonna see what happens. The House Agriculture Committee is meeting soon. So we don’t have details on exactly how they’re gonna approach this. The House Agriculture chairman, G.T. Thompson, has said basically, I wish they’d give me a lower number.
Because he doesn’t really want to cut, he doesn’t want to cut SNAP benefits themselves. They’re fine to make changes and future calculations, or make it so it’s harder to increase SNAP benefits. There’s certain things Republicans are fine with, even like. Work requirements, different policy changes, but actually cutting the amount of grocery benefits that are currently in place is a deeply unpopular and also politically risky thing to do.
Theodore: That’s a bad look. You’re taking food away from people.
Helena: Think about a senior citizen. Think about, you know, a family who is already — I mean, food costs are so high. And think about what kind of phone calls you’re going to get. I mean, there’s the, they know this, right? And this is very immediate, maybe even more immediate than Medicaid.
You may not realize that your Medicaid’s been screwed up until like you’re seeking medical care, right? But the SNAP program is monthly. This is a very tangible impact. And so Republicans are trying to figure out how to make these cuts with, uI guess, the least disruption possible.
And so we’ll see. That’s in process. But that is a big, big, that’s potentially a big, big deal and, you know, impacting tens of millions of people. More than 40 million Americans rely on SNAP to help them afford groceries every month. So there’s that. And that’s gotten not as much coverage in part because of how it’s a wonky process.
They’re kind of early in it. The Senate also is not cool with $230 billion in cuts, so there’s gonna be some compromise. We’re kind of early in the process, but that’s one big thing. Then there’s also all of the cuts that have been made to key food safety agencies, and there, generally speaking, what they’re doing is sort of weakening the system.
So the Trump administration hasn’t directly been cutting food safety inspectors. They’re not. Coming in and saying, ah, we don’t need these FDA food safety inspectors. They’ve not done that, but they’re cutting the ancillary support. So, like, the staff that might help arrange travel, or some of the labs that support the food safety functions were cut.
Although many of those have been brought back now because they sort of realize that there was a lot of pushback. It was deeply unpopular, and also you need some of these functions, and so a lot of them get undone. But it’s weakening. The infrastructure and our food safety system, particularly on the FDA side, was already pretty precarious.
I mean, we do not have, you know, I think sometimes people think that food, there’s more oversight than there really is. Food inspections, you know, an FDA food safety inspection might happen once every couple years at a plant.
Theodore: Well, let’s go over some numbers. We have some numbers. I’m taking this from Reuters, you know, they’re reporting that there have been, including cuts and also people deciding to take buyouts, 15,000 people have left USDAsince Trump took over. And we’re talking about specifically, more specifically, and I want to do a little shout out on this Reuters article because it’s by Leah Douglas, who is a former FERN staffer.
Helena: The best. She’s great.
Theodore: Yeah, she’s great. Yeah. So, according to Leah’s reporting, we’re talking about 555 people from the Food and Safety Inspection, Food Safety and Inspection Service, 498 from Food Nutrition and Consumer Services, and 1,377 staff — I’m going to read this so I get it right — staff departures from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which oversees the national response to bird flu. That’s real. I mean, we didn’t have a perfect food safety inspection, service, policy within the United States before the Trump administration. But this is, how bad is this?
Helena: Well this is where I think it’s complicated. Do I think there’s immediate, do I think there’s an immediate change to the status of food safety in this country? No. I’m not changing my consumption habits. My sister called me in a panic or texted me, like, what’s going on with milk? Right? We’ve all seen, there was a lot going around the internet that milk testing was no longer happening, and that’s not exactly what happened.
Basically, the cut. There have been cuts made to the labs that ensure that there is consistency among the lab testing. So it’s kind of like the accreditation element of — and look, no one looks at that and they’re, well, that’s a cut. That makes sense. Right? The cut doesn’t make sense.
I think most people who work in that industry would say that, but it doesn’t have an immediate effect on the quality or safety of milk. And so it’s in the same theme of food safety experts are very nervous and very concerned about these cuts generally, because we have, I think, a food safety system that was not the most robust.
There weren’t, you know, resources just lying around to begin with. So they don’t like the cuts. They’re very concerned about it, but is the immediate impact there, and I think that’s, I am not changing. I’m not not eating vegetables or drinking milk or buying dairy products because of concerns about that. But I think the overall concern about stressing the food safety system, about defunding it or weakening it overall, those are very real concerns. And I think down the line we could see, you know, slower foodborne illness investigations or less expert advice to some of the things they’ve cut, or like advisory committees that help the federal government tackle difficult food safety challenges like cronobacter in infant formula, which is something that I followed a lot during the infant formula crisis. So it’s kind of both things, like these cuts are very real. They do have an impact, but it’s not like all of a sudden there’s a, you know, food safety doesn’t exist.
A lot of food safety is also handled by the private sector. Retailers have these, you know, a lot of third-party audits, and they have a lot of quality control that they impose on their suppliers. Costco’s known to have their own very strict program about certain things. They require way more testing than FDA does.
And so it’s kind of both things are true, that it’s concerning and it’s also not an immediate emergency. I do think, well, the problem is this. I think overall we’re going to see, we’re going to see more pushback, I think, on these cuts if they continue because so far, the pushback has been able to reinstate a lot of these employees, like a lot of the food additives people were called back. I mentioned the labs. The inspectors themselves are not being targeted, but if you go over to USDA, they can’t run meat plants without USDA inspectors. And so there’s no scenario in which you’re gonna cut, you know, like you would shut down the meat supply.
Theodore: I mean, the problem is real. But what you’re suggesting is that the problem really is that, it’s not that the sky is falling. Or to use the Forked metaphor, we’re not running out of forks and knives. We’re not going to be a spoon country in the next few weeks. But the status quo was not good to begin with.
And the hope, the hope is that we have a government that …
Helena: It’s trying to make it better.
Theodore: Right. And instead, what we’re saying is we’re trying to take solace from the fact that the government is not immediately and disastrously making things worse. And then once we accept that as the metric, where do we end up?
That’s not a good metric. That’s not a good form of accountability or expectation for our government. That is a really bad thing. It’s not the apocalypse that we’re all scared of. But neither is it good, you know?
Helena: Yeah. I think there’s also a bit of a learning curve here, too, that any new administration that’s coming in, you know, it’s easy to be sort of deregulatory in your overall stance until the rubber meets the road and you’re, you know, staring down a potentially very bad lettuce outbreak or, God forbid, infant formula crisis. These kinds of things demand a government response, and they have a way, I think, of clarifying some of the needs around having functional government. So I’m not excusing or I’m not saying that yeah, the cuts are fine. But I think there is, as time goes on, basic functions like food safety, emergency response. You know, I can see more people being called back to FDA.
In fact, this is already happening. There’s news reports that they’re hiring some positions back as contractors. Or, you know, you’re going to need to still put out recall notices. And the recall notices are still going out. Although there’s concerns they could be delayed. There’s real impacts here.
But I do think that many of these positions will end up getting filled or they will end up getting filled with contractors or, God forbid, a horrible thing happens. And then they’ll hire back. I mean, this is what we saw with bird flu. Like they accidentally laid off a whole bunch of people and then they called them back.
But then, as Leah reported and as USDA has said, a lot of people are still leaving. I mean, if you step back, the bigger issue is that a lot of people will just not want to work in the federal government. And so it’s going to be harder to recruit, it’s going to be harder to fill key roles. And there’s just so many things we don’t think about.
Like there’s a bunch of veterinarians that work within USDA to ensure that animals are healthy before they are slaughtered for food. I mean, just there’s all these basic things you just don’t think about. But once you think about it for a few minutes, you’re like, yeah, I don’t know, I think that person is essential, right? That’s a job we want filled.
Theodore: Well, for sure. I mean, this is the thing that we are being confronted with right now. From my perspective, if you look at what the Trump administration is attempting to do, and it’s not just in food policy, it’s somewhat across the board.
They’re making very baseline, fundamental questions — posing fundamental questions about why we have a government at all. Right? And what does the government really do? And if you attack those baseline principles, yes, it doesn’t mean that the whole thing’s going to fall like a house of cards, immediately.
The structures are too sturdy. But you are creating situations where things can get missed. Certainly that could happen, and there could be some really bad outcome. Or it just means, and I’m changing gears a little bit here, your next trip to the DMV, which was always going to be bad, it’s going to really bad.
Helena: Oh, well the DMV’s real messed up because the Real ID. I actually … anyway, we shouldn’t go there.
No, but I think that’s true and also, getting back to a theme we’ve touched on a few times is, yeah, there’s a contradiction within MAHA, too, about this food safety stuff, because so many of the healthiest foods that we are urged to eat, you know, fruits and vegetables, proteins, those can be the riskiest, right?
There’s lots of foodborne illness outbreaks tied to fresh foods, fruits and vegetables. They don’t go through a kill step. Meat and poultry. There’s a reason we have continuous inspection for thoseproducts, because way back in the day, the meat plants were horrifying and they were filthy.
And, you know, you can go back to the days of The Jungle and Teddy Roosevelt to read about that. Poison Squad is a great book. If anyone hasn’t read it, it’s by Deborah Blum. It’s very, very good about this period of time in history. Like there’s a reason we have these regulations. So, you know, if down the road we’re all going be really serious about eating more whole foods, more fresh foods, which is I think what the dietary guidelines are probably going to say.
Because they have a chance to rewrite those this year, you know? Some food safety guardrails around making sure those products get to market without making people sick is, you know, it would be aligned. It would be aligned, it would be MAHA-aligned. Yes.
Theodore: All right, so, that’s all kind of a bummer, I got to say. So let’s change, let’s change gears a little bit for our final segment, which is our good vibes, where we talk about something — doesn’t have to be fantastic, doesn’t have to be amazing — but something that we can pull [some optimism out of food policy.
Helena: We don’t want to bum everyone out.
Theodore: Yes. What are we thinking of?
Helena: So, I mean, you had this great idea because I guess you listened to this podcast, and what was it called? So people should listen to it. Podcast. I haven’t listened to it yet.
Theodore: Yes, it’s an interesting podcast. It’s called Why Should I Trust You? And, uh, I don’t know if they’re referring to me. You should definitely trust me, but …
Helena: Don’t trust anyone. Do you?
Theodore: Yes. It’s hosted by Brinda Adhikari. She is an interesting person because she was the showrunner for the now-canceled show on Apple, the Problem with Jon Stewart. s She’s a very, you know …
Helena: That got canceled?
Theodore: That did get canceled. Well, or he walked, I don’t remember. He walked out on it because he felt like he was getting too much editorial control from Apple. They didn’t want him criticizing Apple, I believe.
Helena: Oh, I missed that. Okay.
Theodore: Don’t trust me on that.
Helena: Are we on Apple?
Theodore: Anyway, she hosted what she called a rare conversation between MAHA grassroots and public health officials.
What she did was, there was a MAHA grassroots chapter in Ohio, and she brought in a number of people from that group, and then also got a number of, I don’t know how you would call them, people who are involved in public health who are not in MAHA.,
Helena: They’re institutionalists.
Theodore: Yes, institutionalists. There you go.Helena: Epidemiologists, registered dietitians. I don’t know, Were there some doctors in there?
Theodore: I think so. And what she had them do ….
Helena: Part of the system?
Theodore: Yeah. Yes. She had them talk to each other. And the positive part of it, and I’ll let you talk to some of the things that you thought were interesting as well, was that they seemed to, after an hour or whatever of conversation, not to disagree on everything. They didn’t agree on every, they didn’t agree on that many things, maybe, but they didn’t hate each other, and they were able to have a civil conversation about issues within food and health. And I don’t know that I always agree with the idea of, like, well, you should talk to your rivals and make sure that you find common ground, because sometimes things are right and sometimes things are wrong. But I think an openness to find out what the other guy is up to is probably a good thing.
Helena: Do you have a family that doesn’t talk politics at holidays? Or is your family not divided enough?
Theodore: No, no. We, we’re all agreeing with each other.
Helena: Okay. Well then that doesn’t count.
Theodore: No. We’re all screaming at each other anyway.
Helena: I disagree with you so strongly.
Theodore: All right, go ahead. Well tell me.
Helena: No, no. So I think, look, there surely are certain things, yes, there’s right and wrong. There’s values. I’m not disagreeing with you there. But yeah, I think part of the problem of where we are now is that, you know, people are, don’t talk about politics at Thanksgiving.
You know, if people disagree. I think that’s part of the problem. You have to be able to have civil conversations, even when there’s deep disagreements. That is just my opinion, and I do have a politically divided family, certain parts of it. But what I found interesting about this is that, I haven’t listened to the series and I’m going to, I think.
Folks who probably listen to this podcast would enjoy it. But I had seen a thread about it, and I actually shared this with a couple of other folks because I thought it was really interesting, and it was basically an epidemiologist was, had participated in this, and she was writing about it. And she was saying she was so angry about, you know, MAHA coming in and basically denigrating this public health system that she’s a part of and that she very much defends as having improved public health over time, right? It is kind of both true that chronic disease is in a sorry state in this country, and also that we have made amazing strides over the last century on infectious diseases in many other, you know, treating chronic diseases and so on.
She said something like, you know, I’m not gonna do that. I was heartbroken, I was skeptical. And then she said,, she said, what followed was one of my most raw, honest, and important conversations I’ve had in years, and some of her takeaways were really important. She was like, a lot of the individuals within MAHA felt like the healthcare system had failed them personally.
Like maybe they had a kid with some sort of health issue or a family member who had been failed in various ways. Also they felt like public health hadn’t been communicating effectively to them. And what I thought was interesting, too, is some of the folks within MAHA don’t like the cuts to public health or don’t want to see NIH, CDC, or FDA, they don’t want to see cuts to those agencies for things like inspections or, you know, support staff. There was just generally sort of discomfort with that. And then she talked about sort of the …
Theodore: Well, that’s what they voted for, right? I mean, there is, you know, they always hear that there’s consequences of elections. I mean, that’s what they put into office. Right?
Helena: For sure. But there are also a lot of more progressive folk, or there’s the Democrat, you know — we talked about this last time — like RFK was formerly a Democrat, and so there are some folks who were brought along on this journey from Democrat to independent to Trump voter within the RFK pipeline, and those folks aren’t necessarily small government, libertarian, conservative, you know. So there is some complexity there, but, surely, yes, Trump was very clear that he wanted to cut government spending. I mean, you can go look at Project 2025.
They were very, very clear about cutting safety net programs. I mean, they’re clear. Trump also at one point said he’d never heard of Project 2025. So I do think that was a little bit confusing for voters. She also talked about some of the differences within MAHA, like not everyone’s anti-vax.
Not everyone is as concerned about food additives or fluoride or whatever. There’s a lot of different threads in there, and it’s really hard to generalize. So I thought in general it was interesting to see just more nuance about covering it, because sometimes we get into this black-and-white thinking of you’re either pro-MAHA or you think MAHA’s insane, right?
If you actually talk to people or you look at polling, or if you go issue by issue, it is more complicated than that. And so I think that’s what I liked about it, that it got into some more of the complexity. And I do think some of the polling has borne this out. I don’t remember if we’ve talked about this specifically, but when RFK Jr. was going before the Senate, the Associated Press did some polling around certain issues, and they found that the, you know, concerns around vaccines were something that I think, you know, 30 percent or a kind of a minority of voters were saying, yeah, I’m concerned about that. And then when you talked about some of the food stuff, like reformulating processed foods to have less sugar, fewer additives, it was the vast majority approve across Republican, Democrat, and independent.
So there are differences of opinion on different issues. I don’t know about fluoride. I don’t know, but if you go issue by issue, it is more complicated, and seeing more folks deal with the contradictions within this and the contradictions between the narrative of MAHA and then the actual policies that are being put forth, I think is kind of good.
I mean, if people are just, like, it’s either amazing or insane, then I don’t know how helpful that is. But I don’t know. We’ll see. I mean, we’re so early in this. We’re like, what? We just passed the hundred day mark of the first 100 days of the Trump administration. Like we are very early in this, and it remains to be seen whether or not MAHA’s going to come through with real policy and action.
And I’m talking federal register. Laws, right? Like we’re looking at act. We have not seen that yet.
Theodore: Well, I think we should leave it with that. I agree with you. Nuance is good. Complexity is good. If there was no complexity in the world, I’d be out of a job. I do, I guess I will leave with one thought from the brilliant mind of Yogi Berra, that it is, in fact, getting late early.
Right? So with that, I will say thank you for a great conversation. Why don’t you tell everybody all about your newsletter and how they could find it and how they could learn all the cool stuff about the food policy world that you’re telling them about every week.
Helena: Yeah, so if you’re into food policy, you can go to foodfix.co and sign up for the newsletter.
It’s free every Friday. It’s been an interesting, I think that I’m getting massive open rates right now because I think people are really interested in what’s going on. So if that’s your jam, go there and, yeah, I’m glad. Thanks for listening. Are we supposed to tell people to review and call their mom and tell their friends about the podcast?
Theodore: Definitely. Yes, you should.
Helena: I feel like every podcast I listen to does that at the end. Share this right now. Text it to someone.
Theodore: I just say thank you and we’ll talk again.
Helena: Yes.
Theodore: Bye.
Teresa: REAP/SOW is a production of the Food and Environment Reporting Network. Our Executive Producers are Theodore Ross, Tom Laskawy, and Brent Cunningham. Our Sound Engineer is Lauryn Newson. Katie Gardner is the Producer and Video Producer for REAP/SOW. I’m your host, Teresa Cotsirilos.
Find out more about FERN and donate to support our independent non-profit reporting at www.thefern.org.
* “What Kennedy Gets Right About the Chemicals in Our Food”