HHS, FDA dis­pute spills out on­to Twit­ter

In the fi­nal months and weeks of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, the De­part­ment of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices (HHS) has ad­vanced sev­er­al poli­cies to con­sol­i­date its au­thor­i­ty over the US Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s (FDA).

To­day, with just one day left in the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, the lat­est dis­pute be­tween HHS and its sub­agency spilled in­to the pub­lic.

Fol­low­ing me­dia re­ports last week that FDA Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Hahn re­fused to sign a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MoU) that would cede FDA’s over­sight of ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied an­i­mals to the US De­part­ment of Agri­cul­ture (US­DA), HHS pushed ahead with the pol­i­cy. A copy of the MoU post­ed to the US­DA web­site shows the doc­u­ment was signed by As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary for Health Brett Giroir and Sec­re­tary of Agri­cul­ture Son­ny Per­due and, telling­ly, lists a li­ai­son for US­DA but leaves the cor­re­spond­ing sec­tion for FDA’s li­ai­son blank.

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