The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has faced mass firings and funding cuts since the new Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, was sworn in on February 13, 2025. These cuts have led to a tumultuous environment for employees and have jeopardized enforcement of federal animal protection laws and important research relating to animal health and wellbeing.

The USDA is tasked with overseeing a wide range of agricultural topics, including farm animal health, infectious disease prevention, and food safety, in addition to programs that support farmers, prevent hunger, and increase rural development. The federal agency both issues regulations and inspects facilities where farm animals are kept. It also plays a crucial role in implementing The Farm Bill—an omnibus bill (a package of smaller, related bills) that addresses many agricultural and food programs, which is generally renewed every five years. The USDA has also tackled important studies, including learning how avian flu spreads from wild birds to poultry flocks, evaluating the success of available vaccines, developing new vaccines to give better protection against new variants of the virus, developing the best methods to detect pathogens, and much more.

In addition to ensuring the health of livestock and enforcing legislation relating to livestock slaughter and processing, biosecurity measures, and food safety, the agency is also charged with carrying out regulations under the Animal Welfare Act (AWA). This includes monitoring certain animals used in research, entertainment, zoos, commercial breeding facilities for companion animals, and a variety of other animal industries. And while AWA legislation doesn't apply to most farm animals, animals raised under the USDA's National Organic Program are subject to federal standards regarding farm animal welfare and keeping conditions. 

The seemingly arbitrary and disorganized fashion in which the firings have taken place has led to confusion amongst employees, decreased ability to carry out enforcement of federal laws, and uncertainty around the continuation of important research. One of these former employees stated that these terminations are, “really crippling the agency.” 

One case where animal welfare is directly affected by the firings is the near elimination of the Department of Agriculture’s Livestock Behavior Research Unit. This unit is instrumental in developing regulatory standards for animal welfare on farms, and all but one member of the staff has been let go. Some of this unit’s important research includes studies of the way farm animals feel pain. “That’s a really important area,” one researcher explains, “trying to demonstrate that certain things that get carried out on farms are painful and really need to be ameliorated with pain relief.” This research was used to support extreme confinement bans in states like Arizona, Florida, Ohio, Utah, California and Massachusetts, which documented how the use of gestation crates are detrimental to the wellbeing of pregnant pigs.

Disease prevention is another area where cuts to the USDA could potentially cause harm—both to animals and to people. As an avian flu outbreak grows across the country, USDA researchers do not know whether their work can continue. Scientists who were working on the current outbreak were initially fired in February, along with thousands of other USDA workers. Once these firings were publicized, the administration claimed they were hiring these researchers back, but it is unclear whether all these former employees have returned to the USDA, and it is also unclear how much disruption and harm this pause in research may have caused.

The USDA also funds the National Animal Disease Preparedness and Response Program (NADPRP) which supplies grants to universities and states for research that focuses on preventing outbreaks of diseases that target livestock. While not currently frozen, the continuation of this research has all become uncertain due to the recent tumult in the federal government.

Communication around the avian flu outbreak has also been impacted since the start of the new administration in January. For a period of time, both the USDA and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) cancelled weekly meetings with state veterinarians and congressional staff, and the US has stopped meeting with experts at the World Health Organization. This lack of knowledge sharing puts both Americans and people abroad at risk.

Additionally, two federal food safety advisory committees have been disbanded as of March 6. The National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF) and the National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection (NACMPI) received a memo stating that they should, “immediately stop all work, meetings, everything. Any more recommendations are prohibited.” These committees helped advise the Secretary of Agriculture and other agencies on matters related to food safety and meat inspection programs. They employed experts from the industry, sciences, academia, and government, and created a place where this collective knowledge could be brought together to protect the food supply of the American people.

Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports released a statement, saying, “The termination of these two important advisory committees is very alarming and should serve as a warning to consumers that food safety will not be a priority at USDA in the foreseeable future. The failure to recognize and leverage the value of the scientific expertise [of these committees] is dangerous and irresponsible.”

There is still hope, however, as challenges to these firings work their way through the courts.  On March 5, a judge ruled that the USDA must reinstate nearly 6,000 USDA workers who were unjustly terminated.  Then, on March 13, another federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reinstate thousands of workers across 19 agencies, including the USDA. It is, as of yet, unclear whether these jobs have been fully reinstated, nor is it clear exactly how these terminations and rehirings have affected farm animals and their welfare, but it is not unreasonable to suspect that all of the tumult and uncertainty has made it more difficult for employees at the USDA to do their jobs to the best of their ability.

Learn more about the connection between animal welfare and pandemic prevention and FOUR PAWS’ global efforts to prepare for and contain infectious disease outbreaks.