The Presidential Budget Request for Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 and related documents have been released, providing insight into federal food safety allocations and priorities for the coming year.

Presidential Budget: Food Safety Overview

The Presidential Budget proposes $20.8 billion and $110.5 billion in base discretionary funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), respectively, representing decreases of $4.9 billion (19 percent) and $15.4 billion (12.2 percent) from FY 2026. USDA faces sizable program cuts and eliminations, including National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA) formula grants and the Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA-AMS).

For HHS, which encompasses the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Presidential Budget names “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) as a significant investment across HHS agencies. This includes $55 million for new Infection Prevention and Healthy and Safe Food initiatives within CDC, which would tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and help address nano- and microplastics in food and water.

USDA-FSIS Funding Remains Stable

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) FY 2027 Budget Request would secure $1.46 million in funding for the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), which is similar to the budget requested in FY 2026 ($1.47 million). Allocations for federal food safety and inspection activities would see a cut of $10,000 but funds for reimbursing state inspection programs would increase by nearly $11,000.

Also consistent with FY 2026, $1.1 billion in discretionary funding is requested for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).

EPA's Budget Halved

The Presidential Budget would also slash U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funding by 52 percent to $4.2 billion, including a 25 percent cut to chemicals programs, leaving $293.6 million and approximately 1,400 staff for chemical and pesticide reviews, according to EPA's budget brief. The proposal allocated $74.1 million for the Toxic Substances Control Act program and $118.8 million for pesticide programs, including $3.5 million to "improve permitting efficiencies" of pesticide registration reviews by "automating manual workflow processes and streamlining the tracking interface for better coordination."

FDA Allocates $57 Million to MAHA

FDA’s FY 2027 Budget Request includes $57 million in funding to MAHA initiatives across the agency, including efforts to remove “unsafe” chemicals in the food supply, support artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning initiatives, and invest in research and development for alternatives to animal testing for regulatory science purposes.

Human Foods Program Gets Budget Boost

FDA’s Human Foods Program (HFP) is penciled to receive $1.28 billion in budget authority in FY 2027, representing a $108.5 million increase over the FY 2026 enacted level. A significant portion of this increase ($65.5 million) came from “reduction to the federal bureaucracy” during FY 2026, per the budget document.

FDA also requests 4,049 HFP full-time equivalents, which is an increase of 50 from the enacted fiscal 2026 headcount.

Money for MAHA Efforts to Address Chemical Contaminants and Additives

Specific allocations mentioned in the FY 2027 budget request include $25 million for MAHA efforts to remove “unsafe” chemicals from food, including expanding the Closer to Zero initiative to eliminate toxic elements from foods consumed by children and to develop a compliance system to test naturally derived food colors for elemental contaminants including lead, mercury, arsenic, and cadmium.

Also under the MAHA umbrella, FDA intends to invest in the development of models to predict levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in food-producing animals, as well as the exploration of legislative changes to close “loopholes” in the “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) pathway.

Funds to Transition Routine Food Safety Inspections to States

Investments related to inspections include $9 million to support transitioning routine domestic food safety inspections to states, and another $9 million to increase the Office of Inspection and Investigations’ (OII’s) inspectional capacity by supporting “enhanced post-marketing surveillance, real-world data, large-scale lifetime interventions with trials, and alternative testing models.”

Legislative Proposals

FDA's Budget Request document also includes several legislative proposals related to human foods. Specifically, FDA is asking Congress for authorities related to:

• Infant formula oversight: Requiring industry to report all product positive test results for relevant pathogens and explicitly requiring infant formula manufacturers to conduct environmental monitoring with specific parameters
• Post-market chemical safety reviews: Requiring industry to provide certain post-market data to FDA and to conduct post-market safety evaluations and reassessments of chemicals added to food, and to submit the results to FDA
• Foreign facility registration fees: Establishing a biennial registration fee for all foreign human and animal food facilities
• Information-sharing with SLTT partners: Allowing FDA to share certain food-related information with state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) authorities, to improve speed and efficiency and to promote collaboration in protecting public health.

Other HFP Priorities for FY 2027

Performance targets FDA set for HFP in FY 2027 include activities related to the review of food and color additive petitions; the enrollment of SLTT jurisdictions in the draft Voluntary National Retail Food Regulatory Program Standards; following up on human and animal food inspection violations; increasing the accuracy rate for confirmation of presumptive Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli positives from leafy green samples; and increasing laboratory surge capacity in the event of a terrorist attack on the food supply.

Regarding the leafy greens sampling performance metric, FDA microbiologists are enhancing the microbiological workflow used to test for STEC, which will improve confirmation accuracy and increase the ability to isolate harmful strains when they are present. A key investment is a new STEC-specific agar used during the confirmation step. This agar is expected to raise FDA’s confirmation rate from about 30 percent to more than 70 percent over the next several years. Progress depends on

access to the STEC-specific agar supplied by an industry partner under a research collaboration agreement. If successful, these improvements could enable FDA to identify and address potential contamination issues in leafy greens and other short shelf life produce before products reach consumers.