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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.”

Claim:

As cited by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a database from anti-trans group Do No Harm proves that from 2019 to 2023, more than 5,500 minors in the United States had sex change surgeries.

Rating:

In August 2026, the Department of Health and Human Services under U.S. President Donald Trump released a report alleging that according to “watchdog analyses tracking,” more than 5,500 minors had undergone “sex change surgeries” from 2019 to 2023.

Here’s what Page 9 of the report says (emphasis ours): 

Watchdog analyses tracking billed charges for minors from 2019 onward estimate almost $120 million in total hospital and clinic billings nationwide, encompassing over 5,500 surgical procedures and 8,500 courses of hormones or blockers. (14)

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(14) “What We Found,” Stop the Harm Database, accessed March 12, 2026, https://stoptheharmdatabase.com/about/. ($119,791,202 in total submitted charges; 5,747 minors had sex change surgeries; 8,579 minors received hormones and puberty blockers).

Social media users across Facebook repeated the supposed statistic and cited the report, including Republican U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger, a pharmacist from Tennessee (screenshot). Similar posts included a video of Adm. Brian Christine, assistant secretary for health at HHS, who claimed that there were more than “5,500 sex-rejecting procedures” performed on minors (screenshot). Snopes readers searched the website to investigate the legitimacy of this statistic. 

The HHS report pulled this number from a database of supposed surgeries created by Do No Harm, an advocacy group that opposes gender-affirming care for trans minors and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in medicine. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that tracks extremist organizations, has designated Do No Harm as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group. 

Do No Harm’s methodology report lists insurance codes — standardized codes insurance companies use to describe various health care procedures and treatments — that the organization used to come up with the statistic. However, a Snopes review of the report found that many of these codes are entirely unrelated to “sex change surgeries,” thus contradicting Do No Harm’s claims. 

Furthermore, both a peer-reviewed study from Harvard University researchers and a Reuters analysis found far lower rates of gender-affirming surgeries among trans minors. In truth, for minors, these surgeries are exceedingly rare and occur only among older teenagers. 

As such, we have rated this claim as false. 

A spokesperson for Do No Harm, Caroline Anderegg, said in an email that answers to our questions could be found on Do No Harm’s methodology page and report. Anderegg did not return a follow-up inquiry noting that the methodology report and page did not answer our questions about what insurance database the group used and how the group filtered the insurance codes to ensure the data included only “sex change surgeries.” 

Methodology doesn’t hold up to scrutiny 

Do No Harm’s website for its “Stop the Harm Database” claimed that between 2019 and 2023, “5,747 minors had sex change surgeries.” 

However, its methodology report said Do No Harm included insurance procedure codes for treatments that do not change a person’s sex, including electrolysis for hair removal, bladder drainage, “removal of excessive skin of upper eyelid” and more (pages 17 through 20). These procedures are also not necessarily for gender-affirming care more broadly and can happen for many different reasons. 

Do No Harm said it included these procedure codes only when connected to a patient with a gender dysphoria diagnosis or transvestic disorder, a psychiatric condition where a patient experiences clinically significant distress or impairment due to sexual arousal while crossdressing (Page 17). 

However, a gender dysphoria code merely indicates that the patient is transgender, not that the procedure was done specifically to alleviate gender dysphoria, said Kellen Baker, senior adviser for health policy at the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank known for tracking LGBTQ-related laws and policies. 

“I really cannot underscore to you how irregular the Do No Harm analysis is,” Baker, whose work as a health services researcher involves identifying trans people in insurance claim databases, said in a phone call.

There are many reasons why a trans patient might receive any number of these procedures that are unrelated to being trans. For example, a trans child could have a urine obstruction and need bladder drainage, or require excess skin removal for droopy eyelids impairing their ability to function. 

Furthermore, some of the codes, such as codes for intersex surgery, are used for intersex people, not transgender people. Intersex people are born with a variety of different sex characteristics that do not fit typical binary ideas of male or female bodies. Intersex infants and children in the United States sometimes receive surgeries, either for medical necessity or, more controversially, to align their bodies with more “typical” traits. 

Baker also pointed out that Do No Harm claims to use “an all-payer claims database” — a database with every open and shut insurance case — but did not reveal which database it used to find this information. He said that such a database with all insurance claim information does not actually exist. 

Gender-affirming surgeries rarely performed on minors

There are very few studies on the number of gender-affirming surgeries done on minors, largely because the surgeries themselves are so rare, Baker said. 

However, Harvard researchers published a peer-reviewed study in 2024 that analyzed 2019 insurance claim data and found no incidences of a child under 12 receiving a gender-affirming surgery. 

Out of a total of about 22 million minors sampled, the study found only 85 instances of a minor undergoing a gender-affirming surgical procedure in 2019, with 82 of those instances involving chest-related procedures, presumably either a chest reduction or breast tissue removal, commonly known as top surgery. The vast majority of those instances involved teenagers ages 15 to 17. 

The study also found that far more cisgender boys — those who align with their gender assigned at birth — received gender-affirming chest reductions than transgender boys. Cisgender boys often receive these chest reductions because of gynecomastia, or physically harmless enlarged chest tissue that can affect their self-esteem and mental health. 

Snopes reached out to the Harvard researchers involved in the study for their thoughts on the Do No Harm database and did not immediately hear back. 

In 2022, Reuters, a credible news source, analyzed data from Komodo Health — considered the most complete health insurance database available — and found 238 mastectomies, or top surgeries, in 2019, 256 in 2020 and 282 in 2021 among trans minors. The analysis also found 56 genital surgeries among patients ages 13 to 17 with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2019 to 2021. 

However, the Reuters analysis did not appear to separate out trans youth who received these surgeries due to health issues unrelated to gender identity, unlike the peer-reviewed study from Harvard researchers. 

Furthermore, any increase in gender-affirming surgeries among trans minors has likely reversed due to the rise in anti-trans health care policies across the country and on the federal level, Baker said.

The bottom line 

The data HHS cited in its report comes from an anti-LGBTQ+ group that used faulty analysis to inflate data on gender-affirming surgeries among trans minors. 

It’s more accurate to say that from 2019 to 2023, more than 5,500 minors, many of whom had a gender dysphoria diagnosis at one point in time, received various procedures for any number of medical reasons, the vast majority of which were unrelated to being trans. 

Peer-reviewed research suggests that gender-affirming surgeries among minors are incredibly rare and usually involve cisgender boys undergoing chest reductions.