Following a series of prominent and detrimental controversies within the past year, public trust in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has begun to diminish.
The federal agency responsible for policies relating to food production, agriculture, and nutrition has faced public outcry concerning its slow responses to health emergencies such as a bird flu outbreak early last year, and another of listeria at a Boar’s Head facility that caused 10 deaths. Additional scandals erupted regarding the USDA’s mismanagement of food aid programs to Native American communities, and alleged discrimination against black farmers, sparking debates about its commitment to serving marginalized groups.
The integrity of the agency’s worker safety standards has also come under scrutiny after a recent study discovered workers in American chicken and poultry processing plants were exposed to musculoskeletal disorders due to uncompromising working conditions among multiple meat producers.
The most prominent of these recent issues has been the department’s responses to the pathogen outbreaks, which have led to numerous deaths and class-action lawsuits.
The first, the bird flu (H5N1), occurred last spring after a strain of the virus emerged among dairy cows in the American southwest. As the outbreak unfolded, the Department of Agriculture claimed that it would not compromise the commercial dairy supply and did not threaten the public health. Nevertheless, it was eventually revealed that the virus was more threatening and had spread to other livestock including pigs and poultry, a development which the department failed to monitor. They also withheld crucial genetic information about the virus from foreign scientists and officials and many criticized its latent claims as lacking evidence.
The H5N1 virus would ultimately be transmitted to humans, with 66 cases and one death being reported as of January 6th, with most infections being mild, according to CDC data. However, the response from the USDA attracted significant skepticism of their conduct which intensified later in the year when a fatal outbreak of listeria ravaged the meat industry.
The outbreak spread across multiple meat processing plants run by the prominent deli company Boar’s Head, resulting in a widespread recall of meat products, ten deaths, and 60 hospitalizations across 19 states. According to AP news, the emergency had been caused by inadequate sanitation practices at a facility in Virginia that consistently violated USDA regulations before the outbreak. Although USDA inspection reports from as early as 2021 did confirm this, there was no record of enforcement action against Boar’s Head during that time, and the department initially withheld them from the public.
In addition to these recent health crises, the USDA has also received criticism for improperly enforcing worker safety standards after a recent study discovered 81% of workers in American poultry processing plants were exposed to musculoskeletal disorders under extreme working conditions. The finding was revealed as meat companies have attempted to accelerate production, and workers have been obligated to repeat dangerous tasks at increasing rates. Though the agency funded research into the matter, its overall response left their enforcement capacity in doubt.
Confounding the situation further, the department has also faced pushback for its management of crises involving minority groups, namely African American farmers and Native Americans.
The USDA has had tensions with the former since its inception but has recently come under fire after it admitted to disproportionately denying black farmers direct loans they needed for essential equipment and land resources. In 2022, 16% of black farmers who applied to the agency for such loans, which are the most accessible, were rejected, far surpassing the 4% rate among white farmers. They also received less coronavirus aid than other groups during the pandemic and tied with Asians for the highest amount of loan withdrawals, due to an application process commonly deemed uncompromising according to NPR.
Officials from the department claimed to have made efforts to make its lending system more equitable but were later accused of falsifying statistics to conceal ongoing disparities.
More tensions erupted last August, when food shortages occurred on various Native American reservations. The department of agriculture, which manages a special food distribution program for households on reservations, was blamed for contributing to the crisis after it had failed to consult leaders of multiple tribes while ending a contract with one of the program’s two food suppliers, a move which caused significant delivery delays. This left thousands of reservation residents without access to food, sparking outrage among them and lawmakers alike.
Even though the department of agriculture has acknowledged its errors in many of these crises and began addressing them, a lack of confidence in its authority has grown among the public.
Kennesaw State student Thaddeus Brake lamented the USDA’s flawed response to the pathogen outbreaks. “It definitely sounds like they messed up big time,” he stated, “I know that government organizations are pretty bad, but mistakes in food safety are on a different level of unacceptable.”
Another student, Nasier Brown, reacted with shameful acceptance, saying, “When you talk about the U.S. government, I already knew this was going to happen.”
Brown attributed the controversy to a general lack of accountability within the U.S. government for its misconduct, claiming, “Our government just doesn’t take anything seriously. It’s really people in power who don’t do anything because they have money and special titles… and when you hire people like that, what do you think is going to happen?”
“It’s just crazy how the richest country in the world can’t even do the simplest things that other countries do on a regular basis,” he added regarding the USDA’s inefficiency.
A third student, Taevon Mburu, reacted to the developments with similar disappointment, arguing, “If we’re going to spend all these tax dollars to help support government agencies, it’s a problem when they don’t do their job.”
He then commented on the USDA’s lack of transparency during the bird flu and listeria outbreaks, adding, “The fact that they weren’t sharing any information makes no sense to me personally… because it’s a disease that could spread anywhere.” He went on to state how open communication with the public was more reasonable than “keeping secrets and letting more people get infected.”
Regarding the racial discrimination and food shortage scandals, Mburu affirmed that the conduct of the USDA was “just not defendable”, even if they had publicly acknowledged their wrongdoing. “It is just not acceptable for agencies like that to simply recognize problems. We pay them to solve them.”
And solving such issues has purportedly become a priority of the USDA in recent months. In October, it was reported that the department’s former Inspector General, Phyllis Fong, initiated an investigation into its response to the Boar’s Head listeria outbreak, though the agency itself never directly confirmed this.
To address the discrimination controversy, the agency has announced a plan to shorten the direct loan application process to increase payment disbursement for underserved famers and introduced an online program to better educate them on its lending system. They also signed a $25 million contract with a new food supplier to resolve the food shortages among the Native American reservations.
However, many continue to criticize these measures as being too late and insufficient, invoking more skepticism. With a forthcoming presidential transition, the future of the Department of Agriculture’s reputation remains uncertain.
