Trump’s FDA and USDA: Five Key Issues To Watch in 2025

The Trump administration’s food regulatory agenda will come into sharper focus once nominees for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and secretary of agriculture are confirmed. The nominees will inherit several ongoing food regulatory initiatives at both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture amid a food regulatory landscape colored by the rise of President-elect Donald Trump’s Make America Healthy Again movement, an increasing patchwork of state food additive bans, the recent creation of FDA’s Human Foods Program, and heightened consumer concerns around so-called “ultra-processed” foods.

Against this backdrop, we anticipate that both FDA and USDA will face unprecedented political attention with multiple influence points across the White House, Congress, and within the agencies themselves.