FDA to undo some layoffs, after cuts to inspections and drug safety

Food and Drug Administration officials have told some scientists and inspections staff that their layoffs will be reversed, after the job cuts led to disruptions in drug and food safety work.

The move marks a significant reversal of a portion of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s layoffs. Kennedy initially planned to cut 3,500 employees from the FDA.

In team-wide meetings that started last week, multiple FDA employees said they were informed by their supervisors that they should expect to have their layoffs reversed. 

Among the laid-off staff told they would be brought back are scientists for drug safety labs in Puerto Rico and Detroit as well as food safety labs in Chicago and San Francisco. A handful of support staff for the FDA’s inspectors are also being brought back.

Multiple FDA scientists said they were eager to go back to work, though they had yet to receive official paperwork for reversing the layoffs.

The New York Times first reported that the FDA’s food safety labs were being reinstated.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services blamed errors in the layoffs on inaccurate data from the department’s “siloed HR divisions.”

“This is exactly why HHS is reorganizing its administrative functions to streamline operations and fix the broken systems left to us by the Biden Administration. Streamlining this into one operation will allow for enhanced data integrity and coordination,” the spokesperson said.

Kennedy has previously said some layoffs would be walked back, like to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s lead poisoning teams. But that reversal never ended up happening, leaving the agency’s lead poisoning work largely abandoned.

Some CDC laboratories also remain closed, including the agency’s now-shuttered labs for investigating outbreaks of hepatitis and sexually transmitted diseases or for worker safety, like oversight of N95 masks.

FDA inspections falling behind

Around two dozen of the support staff for the FDA’s inspectors have been told their layoffs would be reversed, out of nearly 200 who were cut. The employees being restored are focused on booking travel for foreign inspections.

Cuts to the FDA’s Office of Inspections and Investigations have taken a steep toll on the agency’s inspections, especially for overseas manufacturers of drugs and food products. 

A pilot program started under the Biden administration to expand unannounced foreign inspections stalled due to the cuts, multiple officials said. In a recent week, one FDA official said less than 60% of the agency’s planned foreign inspections had been completed. 

Sidelined inspectors of foreign firms have been asked to find ways to “pivot to” local inspections they can do within the U.S. instead, according to internal emails shared with CBS News. More than $700,000 of expenses incurred by inspectors have also yet to be paid, an official said, due to the layoffs to support staff.

Hopes by FDA leaders to increase inspections have also run up against an ongoing federal hiring freeze, officials said, especially as the ranks of supervisors for inspectors have been depleted by early retirements and resignations.

FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary had initially greenlighted a plan to use contractors to fill the gap, before the department moved to reverse some of the layoffs. 

FDA drug safety work stalls

Multiple current and laid-off FDA employees said the abrupt layoffs had resulted in delays and disruptions to the agency’s drug safety work. Virtually all the scientists in the FDA’s San Juan and Detroit labs were cut, leaving only labs in New York and Irvine, California. 

The FDA labs in Detroit and San Juan had also been responsible for checking the shelf life of medical treatments stockpiled by the federal government for the military and pandemics, under a program administered by the Department of Defense. 

The layoffs also cut chemists based out of the labs who worked as foreign inspectors for the FDA, often assigned to travel with badge-carrying investigators to help with more complex or urgent frontline inspections of drugmakers.

Some of the agency’s work to detect and investigate fraudulent medical products had also effectively stalled, they said, amid complications around transferring the custody of the samples and a backlog of work that predated the April 1 layoffs. 

The FDA’s labs had already been struggling with new hurdles to purchasing that had slowed their work, as staff waited for weeks in some cases for supply orders, officials said.