On Thursday at the 2025 Food Safety Summit, the much-anticipated Town Hall session featured a candid discussion and Q&A with federal regulators and government advisors.

Panelists included Kyle Diamantas, J.D., Acting Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA); Denise Eblen, Ph.D., Administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS); Megin Nichols, D.V.M., M.P.H., D.A.C.V.P.M., Director of the Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (joining remotely); and Steven Mandernach, J.D., Executive Director at the Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO). Gillian Kelleher, President and CEO of Kelleher Consultants LLC and the Chairperson of the Food Safety Summit's Educational Advisory Board, moderated the panel discussion.

FDA Modernization Efforts

Mr. Diamantas first shared some background with attendees on where FDA is headed and the agency's vision for modernization. He spoke about the Reagan-Udall Foundation's December 2022 report of its independent review of FDA's Human Foods Program (HFP), which uncovered logistical and functional challenges. As a result of this review, the reorganization of the HFP was implemented in October 2024. Diamantas noted that FDA has recently hired a Chief AI Officer to oversee the implementation of AI technologies and tools within the agency's workflows, including for food safety activities such as data analysis from routine sampling activities.

FDA's HFP under the Trump administration operates under three main risk management pillars: microbiological food safety; nutrition; and food chemical safety, dietary supplements, and innovation. Other modernization strategies mentioned by Diamantas pertain to the food chemical safety pillar. The agency will be releasing a "modernized, evidence-based, prioritization scheme for reviewing chemicals," as well as a revised post-market assessment process for food chemicals, according to Diamantas. The post-market framework will be open to public comment.

"I'd like to leave you with this: At FDA, and the Human Foods Program, we remain fully committed to transparent communication from FDA and to upholding our three core pillars," Diamantas concluded.

Food Safety Regulatory Changes at USDA

Dr. Eblen from USDA-FSIS next spoke about the ongoing changes to regulatory efforts and the workforce at USDA. FSIS workers are considered public safety positions, and the agency continues to maintain its workforce through new hires as necessary, she explained. Dr. Eblen noted that USDA will continue to communicate with stakeholders on the status of the agency workforce. Note: In recent months, more than 15,000 USDA employees have accepted resignation offers from the Trump administration, including experts working on food safety issues such as avian flu.

"Modernization is also a priority for FSIS," Dr. Eblen said in reference to the agency's modernization efforts toward its meat and poultry inspection systems. This effort includes greater utilization of remote inspections. She also spoke about the operational measures FSIS is taking regarding animal disease outbreaks and recent Listeria outbreaks in meat products. "We are prioritizing food safety assessments, which are in-person assessments conducted at meat and poultry facilities," Dr. Eblen stated.

She also spoke about the withdrawn Salmonella Framework for Raw Poultry Products, published in August 2024 by USDA-FSIS under the Biden administration. The comments received from stakeholders on the proposed Framework led USDA-FSIS, under the Trump administration, to withdraw the Framework so that these comments could be taken into account. USDA will decide whether to update the current Salmonella performance standards based on the feedback received.

CDC Reinforces Emphasis on Public Health in an Era of 'Change'

Dr. Megin Nichols spoke about change, including replacing former Division Director Dr. Robert Tauxe on the Summit's Town Hall panel. According to Dr. Nichols, CDC is focusing on public health impact and return on investment. "We want to ensure that the actions we take and the things we do have demonstrated evidence that allows us to save lives," she said.

Dr. Nichols also spoke about how CDC works with state and local partners to gather data on foodborne and other disease exposures and outbreaks, and then track and report on these illnesses nationwide. CDC also works to ensure that states and jurisdictions have the trained personnel they need to detect and respond to foodborne illness outbreaks.

On the topic of CDC's food safety surveillance, Dr. Eblen noted, "We find that early warnings save lives." CDC's surveillance systems allow the agency to respond to foodborne illnesses early and work with its partners to track the data. Dr. Nichols also mentioned that PulseNet, CDC's laboratory network, has undergone updates to enhance the detection of foodborne illnesses faster. FoodNet, CDC's active surveillance system that encompasses networks across ten partner sites, is also undergoing efficiency updates. FoodNet assists in gathering data about key changes seen in foodborne illness outbreaks, such as antibiotic resistance or emerging and recurrent strains of foodborne pathogens.

AFDO Advocates for Food Safety Budgets, Inspections

Steven Mandernach of AFDO spoke about three primary concerns: federal and state budget cuts and how they are impacting food safety programs; the transfer of federal food safety inspections to states; and retail food safety programs, which are carried out at the state and local level.

Mandernach noted that federal funding for foodborne outbreak response teams have been hit with a 50 percent budget reduction, while inspections at the state level have been cut by 40 percent. "These reductions do have a real impact on food safety," Mandernach said, and thanked Mr. Diamantas for making the reversal of these budget cuts a priority.

Regarding the reductions in inspections, Mandernach said, "We do need to maintain domestic inspections at the federal level for a variety of reasons," such as ensuring the safety of infant formula. Some states do not have food safety programs for manufactured foods, and aid from FDA is needed to assist these states in their efforts to ensure safe food production. Other states are so large, and their programs so complex, that their food safety efforts "require the federal presence to be a part of the system," Mandernach noted.

Mandernach also spoke about the need for funding to reduce the incidence of foodborne outbreaks at the retail level. He noted that federal funding for such programs has been cut by 30 percent in recent years, which challenges effective food safety at the retail foodservice level. Mandernach posed the question, "How can we use those very valuable [funding] resources to ensure that inspections are completed?"

In closing, he addressed Summit attendees directly, saying, "You are all very powerful people in this room. You need to tell us what is working and what isn't working, so that we can continue to work on the modernization of the [U.S.] food safety system."

Attendee Q&A With Regulators and Advisors

During the Q&A session immediately following the officials' remarks, one attendee asked about the postponement of the compliance date for FDA's Food Traceability Final Rule, which falls under Section 204(d) of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), by 30 months from the original compliance deadline of January 20, 2026.

"This [decision to postpone] goes back to longstanding engagement with the industry since 2024," Diamantas said. He noted that although FDA does not plan to revisit the structure of the Traceability Rule, FDA considers the postponement necessary in order to ensure that the entire supply chain is prepared and equipped to comply with the regulation in the future.

Another attendee asked if an increase in remote assessments will be seen. Diamantas answered, "Obviously, our desire is to get up our inspection numbers and meet our FSMA target numbers that we haven't hit since 2018 or 2019." He noted that FDA plans to use AI to assist with analyzing inspection data and getting more inspections completed, but noted that AI will not be used as a replacement for inspectors.

Food Safety Summit Educational Advisory Board (EAB) member Larry Keener next asked about FDA's plan for revisiting the use of chemicals in the food supply and what that will encompass.

"What we're working to do is to stand up a post-market [chemical] review framework that will focus on the review of possibly harmful chemicals in the food supply… We want to move from a reactive process to a proactive process to ensure our chemicals remain safe," Diamantas said.

Sandra Eskin, CEO of STOP Foodborne Illness, then asked the panelists about their agency's top two focuses for reducing microbiological contamination of the food supply. Dr. Eblen noted that USDA-FSIS is focusing on Listeria monocytogenes and gathering more data from ready-to-eat (RTE) food establishments. "We are looking at practices that contribute to foodborne illness and updating our guidance and inspection activities," Dr. Eblen added.

Diamantas said that microbiological food safety remains FDA's largest focus of its third risk management pillar, and it also receives the most funding. "Despite efforts in growing our other pillars, we're not taking our foot off the gas with microbiological food safety," Diamantas said.

Mandernach added that addressing the 60 percent of foodborne illnesses associated with retail foodservice in the U.S. requires bigger budgets for inspections and ensuring that inspections are performed.

Dr. Nichols emphasized that CDC is focusing on the concept of "science to action" with regard to microbiological contamination of the food supply, especially when it comes to gathering and using data on foodborne pathogens.

Another attendee asked how the regulatory agencies plan to communicate with industry on food safety policies and regulatory changes, and how they plan to work with stakeholders to ensure that regulations make sense.

"From my perspective at the Human Foods Program, we're putting a big emphasis on transparency" and making public the data that FDA gathers to help guide industry, Diamantas noted.

"Transparency is really important, and we post a lot of raw data on our website," Dr. Eblen said. "We want to be transparent with our data and make efforts to meet with our stakeholders," as well as continue to update USDA's guidances and guidelines, she added.

Another Summit EAB member, Drew McDonald from Taylor Farms, next asked if the agencies might consider collaborating on a single approach to food safety—even if consolidation of the federal agencies into a single food agency is not possible. He also asked how industry would be able to participate in that collaboration.

Dr. Eblen answered, "We make the best effort we can at USDA to liaison with our FDA colleagues… and make sure that we know who our partners are at FDA" for dual-jurisdiction food safety investigations. "If there's an actual outbreak, we do work very closely with folks on the ground at FDA and CDC. We do try to ensure that we have the best communication possible between USDA-FSIS, FDA, and CDC," Dr. Eblen continued. She also noted that agency leaders hold weekly and monthly meetings to communicate information on their work projects and progress.

"I think there's a lot more coordination and collaboration that goes on [among the agencies] than the public sees," Diamantas posited. "We work closely with CDC, USDA, and our state partners, especially on outbreak investigations… We're doing the best we can, given the jurisdictional issues that exist."

Mandernach added that the amount of collaboration among federal and state agencies on food safety efforts and inspections has improved significantly over the past 15 to 20 years. This close collaboration helps mitigate foodborne illnesses, he said.

The Town Hall session is available to watch on-demand here, along with other livestreamed sessions from the 2025 Summit, for one year. More web coverage of the Summit can be found here.

The 2025 Food Safety Summit took place from May 12–15 at the Donald E. Stevens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois. Next year, the Summit will be held from May 11–14, also at the Donald E. Stevens Convention Center. Thanks to all those who attended this year, and we look forward to seeing you back in Rosemont in 2026!