The United States Food and Drug Administration is suspending efforts to improve its bird flu testing of milk, cheese and pet food because of staff cuts by the team headed by Elon Musk.
The FDA’s testing for bird flu in dairy products has found that pasteurization kills the virus, and has also provided clues to the scope of the virus’s spread. At least two house cats have died after eating raw pet food that later tested positive for bird flu.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the FDA, on Tuesday began firing 10,000 employees to comply with President Donald Trump’s push to shrink the federal workforce.
The Interlaboratory Comparison Exercise for detecting Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza has been suspended because of cuts to staff at the FDA’s Human Food Program that would have supported the scientific and testing needs of the program, an internal e-mail obtained by Reuters news agency said.
The program would have included more than 40 laboratories across FDA’s Veterinary Laboratory Investigation and Response Network (Vet-LIRN) and USDA’s National Animal Health Laboratory Network, as well as FDA food labs and private industry.
“(The program) would have been critical to ensure confidence in the laboratory methods for food safety and animal health,” the e-mail said.