Job cuts at USDA reduced staff dedicated to stopping noxious plants and invasive species from entering U.S.

Sniffing dog at work.
(USDA photo)

The federal "Department of Government Efficiency" has eliminated agricultural jobs it considers unnecessary, but the cuts could allow noxious plants and invasive bugs from foreign countries to gain a foothold in the United States. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Dog Detection Training Center is one area that received significant cuts, which could prove troublesome.

Derek Copeland, who lost his job during DOGE's cuts, worked to "prepare beagles and Labrador retrievers to sniff out plants and animals that are invasive or vectors for zoonotic diseases, like swine fever," reports Kate Knibbs for Wired. "Copeland estimates the NDDTC lost about a fifth of its trainers and a number of other support staff when 6,000 employees were let go."

Before his termination notice, "Copeland had just spent several months training the only dog stationed in Florida capable of detecting the Giant African land snail, an invasive mollusk that poses a significant threat to Florida agriculture," Knibbs writes. He told her, “We have dogs for spotted and lantern flies, Asian longhorn beetles. I don’t think the American people realize how much [stuff] people bring into the United States.”

The staffing cuts translate into years of lost education and training to protect American crops from invasive pests. Mike Lahar, the regulatory affairs manager at U.S. customs broker Deringer, told Knibbs, “These aren’t your average people. These were highly trained individuals — inspectors, entomologists, taxonomists.”

Allowing potentially harmful bugs and plants into the U.S. could be one harmful after-effect of DOGE's massive staffing cuts, and ports teaming with rotting food could soon be another. "Supply chain experts warn that the losses could cause food to go rotten while waiting in ports and could lead to even higher grocery prices," Knibbs explains. U.S. grocery supply chains are already suffering from tariff whiplash and persistent food inflation woes.

Kit Johnson, the director of trade compliance at the U.S. customs broker John S. James, "predicts prices and waste to increase. But what raises the most alarms for him is the increased likelihood of invasive species slipping through inspection cracks," Knibbs reports "He says the price of missing a threatening pest is 'wiping out an entire agricultural commodity,' an event that could have 'not just economic but national security impacts.'"