The USDA said Thursday it will move about two-thirds of the Food Safety and Inspection Service’s Washington-area workforce out of the region, opening a new National Food Safety Center in Urbandale, Iowa, and a Science Center in Athens, Georgia. The changes are part of a broader reorganization that also pulls more Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture employees back to Kansas City.
Secretary Brooke Rollins said the department is being repositioned so it can best support American agriculture and protect public health, while deputy undersecretary Stephen Vaden said the plan will reduce duplication and improve accountability. USDA said the new Iowa center will be the agency’s largest office in the country and will house about 200 employees, serving as the main hub for FSIS administrative, technical and support operations, including resource management, training, food safety education, financial operations, information technology and administrative services.
The Athens Science Center will build on the existing Eastern Field Services Laboratory and expand work in microbiology, chemistry and epidemiology. About 200 D.C.-based FSIS employees will be reassigned, while roughly 100 positions will remain in the national capital region to handle congressional engagement, policy development and interagency coordination. FSIS will also establish operations in Fort Collins, Colorado, for staff who support international activities.
The agency said its frontline inspection workforce will not be affected. That matters because inspectors make up 85% of FSIS’s total workforce, and it is the part of the agency most directly tied to day-to-day food safety enforcement. USDA said the relocation effort is intended to put the department closer to the work it says matters most.
The move also echoes earlier shake-ups at USDA. During President Donald Trump’s first term, the Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture relocated hundreds of Washington-based employees to Kansas City, and more than half of the workers who received relocation notices left the agency rather than move. USDA said on Thursday it will send more ERS and NIFA employees now in the national capital region to Kansas City, including staff who were moved there in 2019 and later shifted elsewhere. This time, the department is betting the work follows the people, not the other way around.
For USDA, the question is no longer whether it wants to move federal agricultural work away from Washington. It does. The real issue is whether it can keep the people it needs when the boxes are packed.