Food and Drug Administration officials said scientists and testing staff would reverse the layoffs after job cuts led to disruptions in drug and food safety work.
The move shows a major reversal of some of the health and welfare secretaries. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Layoff of. Kennedy initially planned to cut 3,500 employees from the FDA.
At a team-wide meeting that began last week, multiple FDA employees said they were informed by supervisors that they should expect to reverse the layoffs.
Among the layoff staff are scientists from the Drug Safety Labs in Puerto Rico and Detroit. Food Safety Lab In Chicago and San Francisco. A small number of support staff for FDA inspectors are also being brought home.
Several FDA scientists have not yet received official documents to reverse the layoffs, but they said they are eager to return to work.
The New York Times first reported that the FDA’s Food Safety Lab is reviving.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services condemned the mistake of laying off inaccurate data from the department’s “siloed HR department.”
“This is precisely why HHS is reorganizing its management functions to streamline operations and fixing the broken systems left behind by the Biden administration. Streamlining this into one operation will enhance data integrity and coordination,” the spokesman said.
Kennedy has it I said it before Some layoffs return like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s lead poisoning team. However, the reversal never happened, leaving the agency’s lead addiction job Mostly abandoned.
Some CDC labs also remain closed, including agents currently tidy labs for investigations Hepatitis and sexually transmitted disease outbreaks or For the safety of workerslike monitoring N95 masks.
FDA inspection is delayed
Approximately 20 support staff from the FDA inspectors are said to have the layoffs reversed out of the nearly 200 people cut. The restored employees are focused on booking trips for foreign inspections.
FDA’s reductions to the inspection and investigation bureau are Agent inspectionEspecially for overseas manufacturers of drugs and food.
According to several officials, a pilot program was launched under the Biden administration and was launched to expand testing in foreign countries that have not stagnated due to cuts. In a recent week, an FDA official said that less than 60% of the agency’s planned foreign inspections have been completed.
According to an internal email shared with CBS News, bystander inspectors at foreign companies are being asked to find a way to “pivot” the field inspections that can be performed in the United States instead. The costs of more than $700,000 incurred by inspectors have not yet been paid, officials said for layoffs to support staff.
Hopes to increase testing by FDA leaders are also opposed to the ongoing freeze on federal employment, officials said, especially as the ranks of inspector supervisors have been drained by early retirement and resignation.
FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty McCurry had At first it was lit by green Plans to use contractors to fill gaps.
FDA Drug Safety Occupational Stand
Several current and laidback FDA employees said the sudden layoffs have led to delays and disruptions in the agency’s drug safety activities. Almost every scientist in the FDA’s San Juan and Detroit lab was cut off, leaving only the lab in New York and Irvine, California.
The FDA labs in Detroit and San Juan were also responsible for checking the shelf life of medical treatments the federal government has stockpiled for the military and pandemic under a Pentagon-controlled program.
Layoffs also cut chemists from the lab where they worked as FDA foreign inspectors and were assigned to travel with investigators who often carry badges, helping drugmakers with more complex or emergency frontline inspections.
He said that some of the agency’s work to detect and investigate fraudulent medical products had been effectively stagnant amid complications relating to sample custody transfers and forwarding backlogs of work prior to the April 1 layoffs.
The FDA lab had already struggled with new hurdles to purchasing that delayed work as they waited for a supply order for several weeks.
