News milk
Trump cuts hit US quality control
The massive government spending cuts that the US has implemented under President Trump are also affecting quality controls on dairy products and other food products. Controls on A-quality are a thing of the past.
Read this article?
Become a subscriber and get instant access
Choose the subscription that suits you
This has been confirmed by the US Department of Health and the FDA. In total, the said department must cut $40 billion, as a result of which tens of thousands of civil servants will be laid off.
As a result, since last Monday (April 21), no more checks have been carried out to determine whether products still meet the standard for first-class quality.
Due to the unrest this caused, the FDA and regional governments rushed to ensure that this does not mean that milk, cheese and other products will now go to the consumer uninspected. Inspections are certainly still carried out, but through periodic inspections in factories, less frequently and intensively. It had already become known that the FDA had stopped checking milk and dairy products for the presence of (traces of) bird flu and cyclospora, an intestinal parasite that causes diarrhea and is common in the US but rare in the EU.
It’s not yet clear what all this means for U.S. dairy and other food exports. The Trump administration wants to export more U.S. product, particularly to countries with negative trade balances, but additional concerns about product quality pose an additional hurdle.