Foodborne illnesses swept the US this summer. Is Project 2025 to blame?

Outbreaks of cyclosporiasis, E. coli and salmonella sickened thousands of people across the U.S. in summer 2026, prompting widespread concern about the country’s food quality.

Searching for a reason behind the contaminated food, some people pointed to Project 2025, a sweeping proposal to overhaul the federal government released by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation.

Posts appeared on social media claiming that Project 2025 recommended lower safety standards for food production. “Just a quick reminder that making food unsafe was a part of Project 2025,” some posts claimed. 

Other posts alleged more specifics, asserting a specific chapter of the roughly 1,000-page document at the center of Project 2025 (“Chapter 13”) outlined ways to create “food insecurity by cutting safety nets and slashing regulations and restrictions on food production.”

Snopes has done much reporting on Project 2025, including a report on the close ties between its authors and U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration. The administration’s decisions have often mirrored ideas in the Project 2025 document, which touches on everything from immigration to abortion to climate change.

The claim linking Project 2025 to foodborne illnesses implied the following:

1. Project 2025 called for slashing food safety regulations and/or oversight.
2. The Trump administration followed those recommendations.
3. Those changes led to the recent outbreaks of foodborne illness.

To investigate, we reviewed the Project 2025 document, looking for passages that allegedly recommend cuts to “safety nets” or regulations that could make food less safe to eat. We also reached out to the Heritage Foundation and federal agencies in charge of food safety and regulations, the Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration, and are waiting for replies.

Compared to other policy issues, the document contains very few ideas for changing the country’s food system. It uses vague language while discussing food safety and regulations, making its directives largely up for interpretation by the reader. For example, it calls for the federal government to limit the USDA’s role in food production without any specifics. 

Specifically, Project 2025 calls for changing regulations on three products — baby formula, red meat and poultry and genetically modified foods 

At no point does the document explicitly call for loosening food safety rules on a grand scale, nor outline budget and staffing cuts for the USDA or FDA. It also does not mention iceberg lettuce, jalapeño peppers, frozen blueberries or other foods that caused the wave of foodborne illnesses.

Complicating this assessment more, there’s no evidence to prove Project 2025 directly inspired any decisions by the Trump administration. The president has frequently attempted to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation’s effort, despite its overlap with many of his policies. 

As a result of the ambiguity and unknowns, Snopes did not rate the veracity of the claim.

When asked if Project 2025 impacted the administration’s thinking on food safety regulations, a White House spokesperson said Trump had “nothing to do with Project 2025.” 

Project 2025 aside, the Trump administration has made sweeping changes to the USDA and FDA in its purported attempt to eliminate unnecessary government spending. The departments have faced budget cuts and eliminated thousands of jobs related to food safety. 

Snopes asked the White House for its response to the claim that those changes created conditions for the wave of foodborne illnesses. The White House spokesperson said “FDA inspectors and other critical frontline personnel” at the USDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which traces foodborne illnesses, were not affected by the staffing reductions. 

Reporting by reputable journalists at ProPublica and other news outlets refuted that claim.

For example, in April 2025, ProPublica reported that the FDA lost workers who support inspections of “everything from dairy farms to seafood processors to blood banks,” including people “responsible for safeguarding food.”

What Project 2025 says

Project 2025 dedicates an entire chapter to the USDA, and it includes recommendations outside of the agency’s work overseeing the country’s food supply chain. For example, the chapter suggests more restrictions on people’s access to SNAP food assistance and the national school lunch program.

It paints broad strokes while recommending changes to food regulations, proposing that the USDA “remove obstacles imposed on American farmers and individuals across the food supply chain” (Page 293).

As far as specifics, the document calls for changing regulations on baby formula that “unnecessarily delay” manufacturing and sales in an attempt to combat shortages (Page 302). The document says that change should be considered a priority.

A second detailed recommendation pertains to poultry and red meat. Currently, poultry and red meat can be sold across state lines if it was packaged in a facility inspected by the USDA, with limited exceptions for certain small businesses. The USDA may approve state-level agencies to inspect facilities handling red meat and poultry, but those facilities may only sell products within the state. 

Project 2025 calls for a new law to allow state-inspected facilities to sell meat across state lines (Page 305).

Finally, Project 2025 recommends removing “obstacles for agricultural biotechnology,” an obfuscated way to say it supports the production of genetically engineered foods. 

In 2016, Congress passed a law requiring all genetically engineered food to be labeled as such so consumers know what they’re eating. 

Project 2025 argues that that legislation was “just a means to try to provide a negative connotation to GE food.” The document encourages the USDA to “embrace” genetically engineered foods (it’s unclear how or by doing what) and push for a repeal of the 2016 mandatory labeling law (Page 307).

While the Trump administration has dramatically reshaped agencies that regulate food safety, as far as Snopes can tell, it has not implemented any of those proposals related to baby formula, red meat and poultry and genetically modified food.

We examined other chapters

Some social media posts pointed to “Chapter 13” of the Project 2025 document in their claims about food production, though that section is about the Environmental Protection Agency — not food or farming. It contains nothing about food safety or regulations.

Next, we considered a chapter dedicated to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA.

While that chapter discusses the FDA for several pages, it makes no mention of the FDA’s authority as a food regulator. 

Almost two full pages discuss abortion medication. Other sections propose increasing people’s access to generic drugs; allowing the import of some vaccines from other countries; streamlining the approval process for some laboratory tests; and reducing the pharmaceutical industry’s connections to the agency.

We also investigated the document’s proposed changes to the CDC. 

Those passages are fully dedicated to the COVID-19 pandemic and abortion policies and do not reference the agency’s work to track foodborne illnesses.

USDA, FDA changes under Trump

The Trump administration has made large-scale changes to the USDA and FDA through budget cuts and dramatic staffing reductions, largely as part of the Department of Government Efficiency initiative led by tech billionaire Elon Musk that began in early 2025. 

According to the Office of Personnel Management, the USDA has lost 5,129 employees in departments involved in food safety since the start of the 2025 fiscal year. The FDA lost 4,624 employees across the same timespan. 

The Trump administration has also changed how agencies in charge of food safety can implement new rules. 

For example, Trump issued an executive order early in his second term that requires such agencies to repeal 10 existing regulations when they wish to implement a new one. (It’s unclear how this executive order is enforced, and to what extent it has been enforced.)  

Other Trump-era policy changes have impacted food safety. Among them, the FDA announced in March 2025 it planned to delay the enforcement of stricter tracking requirements for many fresh foods by about two and a half years. 

Snopes previously reported on this decision by the FDA in an article exploring connections between the Trump administration and Taylor Farms, a lettuce producer linked to the ongoing cyclosporiasis outbreak. 

Consumer protection groups like Consumer Reports and the Center for Science in the Public Interest have criticized the staffing cuts and policy changes for potentially weakening the safety of the food chain. The center wrote in a statement condemning them:

“When the FDA is unable to inspect, people die.”