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May 27, 2025 <\/b>\u2013 During an appearance<\/a> in front of a Senate committee last week, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary said the agency is now using artificial intelligence (AI) to help oversee the safety of the nation\u2019s food supply.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re using AI to identify where we should be concentrating our food inspections,\u201d he said, \u201cand it turns out the AI can sometimes figure out pattern recognition faster than we can as human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n The agency has been working on a pilot program<\/a> focused on imported seafood for several years, but a bigger shift is now taking place, with an \u201caggressive agency-wide AI-rollout<\/a>\u201d announced earlier this month that will impact various departments, including scientific reviews of new drugs.<\/p>\n According to an FDA spokesperson, \u201call FDA centers will be operating on a secure, unified generative AI platform integrated with the agency\u2019s internal data systems\u201d by June 30.<\/p>\n It\u2019s just one example of the Trump administration\u2019s larger embrace of AI that has implications for the country\u2019s food system. Trump signed an executive order<\/a> to boost AI in January, and Elon Musk\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been using his AI program<\/a>, Grok, to analyze federal data. Last week\u2019s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission report<\/a> included a recommendation to use AI to analyze nutrition data \u201cfor early detection of harmful exposures and childhood chronic disease trends.\u201d<\/p>\n But the news that the FDA will expand its use of AI within its food-safety procedures comes at a moment of heightened concerns about the agency\u2019s oversight of the food supply. In February, the FDA failed to share the findings<\/a> of its investigation into an E.coli outbreak that sickened nearly 90 people last fall with the public, according to the Washington Post. <\/i><\/p>\n Makary has maintained that no \u201cscientists\u201d have been cut amid the agency\u2019s downsizing<\/a>, and criticized the Post<\/i> for using a \u201cmisleading headline<\/a>,\u201d but other reporting has found individuals working on food safety have been fired (and sometimes reinstated)<\/a>. Makary also told the Senate last week that the FDA reduced its communications staff from 380 to 160 positions. \u201cThat covers a lot of the communication work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n