— OPINION —
By Siobhan DeLancey, RVT, MPH
This past week, I concluded my 21-year career with the FDA.
A communicator by trade, I spent the majority of my time in the food realm (both human and animal), first in the agency’s main press office, then with what was then the Office of Foods and Veterinary Medicine. For the past seven years, I’ve managed communications for the Center for Veterinary Medicine.
As has been well-covered, April Fool’s Day brought a hatchet to communications programs across the agency. Few public affairs or health communications specialists were spared. I was lucky to be old enough and have sufficient time served to qualify for what is euphemistically called “early retirement.”
I’d like to tell you what that means for food safety.
As my former boss Steve Solomon liked to say, communication is about telling your story. We don’t make the action happen – we find the best way to tell you about it, what it means for your health, and what you can do to protect yourself. We fight for transparency, push back on misinformation, correct the record, and strive to find new ways to reach consumers quickly and succinctly. We’re the megaphones.
Without us, the agency is a black box.
I’ve often joked that CVM is the red-headed stepchild of the agency. We’re tiny, physically located away from the main campus, and many people don’t quite understand how we relate to the overall mission of FDA. We don’t directly manage the safety of your food, but, instead, we regulate the food and medications given to the animals that produce the meat, milk and eggs you serve to your children.
We also regulate the food for your faithful companion, the one that might curl up in your lap – or sleep on your head. That’s also the food your infant might encounter on an enterprising crawl around the kitchen floor. More than a few tiny hands have decided to explore a cross-species culinary delight, and that pet food had better be free of dangerous pathogens, heavy metals or chemical contaminants – not just for the health of the pet, but also for the people who encounter it.
When it isn’t, and a company won’t recall, we spring into action. It’s no 9-5 job – I can’t tell you how many nights, weekends and holidays (five Christmases in a row!) we’ve spent pulling together all the information consumers need to know in order to protect themselves, honing the messaging, clearing it through the highest levels of the agency, all to make sure that it reaches you where you are.
That’s gone. There will be no more safety alerts, no bird flu updates, no information detailing what we’re doing about PFAS. No leverage to spur a recalcitrant company to do the right thing. No news about pesticides or antimicrobial use.
All of the centers also lost their FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) and policy teams, so good luck relying on a timely response to your FOIA request to reveal the inner working of the agency or gleaning information from the Federal Register. Guidances for Industry on how to comply with the law? Doubt you’ll see many in the next four years, and even if one gets through deregulation, how will you know?
We should all be frightened when the ability to communicate is taken away. The administration has become braver about suing or otherwise intimidating news media that run stories counter to its narrative. Now, it’s muzzling its own public servants. How long before it comes for you?
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