After 10 years as the top boss at USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), Al Almanza stepped down in 2017. In the eight years since then, an administrator of FSIS to lead the food safety agency’s 8,300 employees has been named four more times.
The most recent person named to the position is Justin Ransom, Ph.D., who starts on July 14. While he began his career at the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, he comes from the private sector, having worked for companies such as Tyson Foods, McDonald’s, and OSI Group.
Ransom replaces Denise Eblen, Ph.D., who is stepping down to again be Deputy FSIS Administrator. She was named administrator in late 2024 after Paul Kiecker, who had held the top job since 2020, quit to head FSIS’s investigation, enforcement, and audit functions.
Kiecker replaced Carmen Rottenberg, an attorney who took over when Almanza left in 2017. Rottenberg left the federal government for the private sector after spending two decades in public service.
The FSIS Administrator is one of the most important executive positions in food safety, overseeing a $1.5 billion budget. The agency’s statutorily required food safety inspections are conducted at approximately 7,100 inspected establishments. The FSIS inspection personnel must be present for these meat and poultry establishments to operate.
The FSIS allocates 80 percent of its funding to salaries and benefits, primarily for inspection personnel in those establishments and other frontline employees, such as investigators and laboratory technicians. Overall, 95 percent of the FSIS appropriation goes toward salaries and benefits, as well as mission-critical travel for inspectors and investigators.
The Trump Administration proposes to reduce the FSIS workforce to approximately 8,000, from the current 8,300, through modernization and “other efficiencies.”
The 2026 budget submission proposes discretionary funding of $1.205 billion, reducing base costs by $24 million and requesting an increase for reimbursement to states of $15.2 million for their inspection program, resulting in a net decrease of $8.8 million below the 2025 enacted appropriation.
The 2026 budget includes a pay freeze and promotes efforts to demonstrate cost savings.
The reduced staff, the budget submission says, will be at sufficient levels “to protect public health and ensure a safe and abundant American food supply while increasing economic growth in rural America; verify truthful and accurate labeling; conduct statutorily required food safety reinspection of imported meat, poultry, and egg products to protect American consumers from unsafe food, and protect producers of American livestock and poultry from foreign animal diseases; support deregulatory actions while maintaining food safety, such as removing barriers to increased line speeds in poultry and swine establishments, and enhancing IT systems to reduce paperwork and increase efficiency for meat and poultry processors, enabling them to expand market access both domestically and through exports to foreign countries.
“FSIS will also track and identify the source of foodborne illness outbreaks from contaminants, including pathogens such as Listeria monocytogenes in deli meats,” the budget submission says. “In 2026, FSIS will re-propose permanent changes to provide inspection personnel with flexible work arrangements, thereby increasing retention of these frontline employees,” it continues. “With this. change, FSIS can provide flexible scheduling for inspectors rather than requiring them to work all hours and days of plant operations.”
This program will allow inspectors to request flexible work arrangements, including work schedules for both regular and overtime hours, contingent on the availability of options to cover required inspection duties.
It claims that this change will be cost-neutral for the industry because the industry will still only be charged for the extra services they request
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced the new assignments for Ransom and Eblen on July 3.
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