Derek Copeland worked as a trainer at the USDA’s National Dog Detection Training Center before being suddenly fired last month This is invasive or zoonotic vector Swine flu. Gu Lun estimated that when 6,000 employees were at that time, NDDTC lost about one-fifth of coaches and other support staff. Let go of USDA In February, as part of the Trump administration’s planned administration-wide purge, Elon Musk’s so-called Ministry of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
He said Gulun had just spent months training the only dog in Florida that could detect a huge African land snail, an invasive mollusk that poses a major threat to Florida agriculture, before receiving the dismissal notice. “We have dogs with spots and lanternfly, Asian longhorn beetles,” he said. “I don’t think the American people are aware of how much nonsense people are bringing to America.”
The trainer is just one example of USDA’s highly professional USDA staff who have been evacuated from the station in recent weeks. The recent cuts have been particularly severe in teams dedicated to inspecting plant and food imports, including factory protection and isolation programs, which have lost only hundreds of employees.
“This creates problems left and right,” said a current USDA worker. He was asked to remain anonymous for fear of revenge, like other federal employees in the story. “It’s basically a skeletal worker,” said another USDA staffer, noting that they and most of their colleagues have advanced degrees and have been trained for years to protect the U.S. food and agricultural supply chain from invasive pests. “It’s not something that’s easy to be replaced by artificial intelligence.”
“These aren’t your average people,” said Mike Lahar, regulatory affairs manager for U.S. customs broker behemoth Deringer. “These are well-trained people – detectors, entomologists, taxonomists.”
Lahar and other supply chain experts warn that these losses could cause food to rot while waiting in the port and could lead to higher groceries prices, in addition to increasing the chances of potentially devastating invasive species entering the country. These dangers are particularly serious at a time when U.S. grocery store supply chains have been caused by other business disruptions. Bird flu and President Trump New tariffs.
“If we were to check less food, the first thing that happened is that the food we didn’t check could go bad. We will eventually lose resources.
Cuts in the homeland of major transport ports in coastal states, especially the USDA. USDA sources spoke with WIRED, estimated that the port of Los Angeles is the busiest port in the United States, losing 35% of its total plant protection and isolation workers, and 60% of its “smuggling and intercepting” workers, whose mission is to stop entering the country’s nonprofit pests and cargoes. Miami ports that deal with large amounts of U.S. factory imports lost about 35% of factory inspectors.
