WHEN THE WORKERS ARE AWAY, THE MICE WILL PLAY — Who among us hasn’t left a half-eaten afternoon snack stashed away in our desk? Your morning hosts can’t pretend to be above such an office-etiquette faux pas. Alas, FDA employees are just like us. The agency confirmed to Lauren and David that it’s grappling with a field mouse problem in some of its White Oak campus buildings, which was exacerbated by workers leaving food at their desks while they largely worked from home the past two years. “It is accurate that food products left behind in offices when maximum telework was implemented is a contributing factor to offices with pest control issues,” FDA spokesperson Stephanie Caccomo said. Less than 10 percent of office building space is affected, she said, and mice have been found inside the Office of the Commissioner, the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research and the Center for Devices and Radiological Health. It all started with a mouse: But two former agency officials said FDA’s sprawling Silver Spring, Md., campus has long had an issue with mice, dating back to at least President Barack Obama’s first term. FDA began consolidating its federal real estate footprint in the early 2000s, taking over the former Navy site at White Oak and rebuilding office and lab space. One former official said staff attributed the mice problem in the early 2010s to that construction, given the campus’ otherwise bucolic environment. Its persistence, the official said, is yet another headache for FDA employees who have faced unprecedented workloads during the pandemic. “I know they’re contemplating transitioning back, but nothing will kill morale [like] opening your desk after two years and finding evidence of mice,” the person said. Other woodland creatures have apparently been spotted inside agency headquarters, according to at least two FDA alumni. “When I worked at White Oak there were frogs everywhere. I found a tiny one going through security in building 66,” device safety expert Madris Kinard tweeted. “When I was at FDA, we had a problem with garden snakes that we found in the building,” former commissioner Scott Gottlieb tweeted. “We got rid of the snakes, and look what happens…” FDA IS FAILING TO MEET CONSUMERS’ EXPECTATION FOR FOOD SAFETY — A POLITICO investigation by Helena Bottemiller Evich found that food regulation by FDA is plagued by inaction and structural failures. Through more than 50 interviews, Evich uncovered that power struggles paralyze food regulators’ ability to keep dangerous contaminants out of baby formula and water, leading to severe illness and even death. Murray calls on Califf to take action in response: Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, authored a letter to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf on Monday, citing the POLITICO report. She asked Califf what steps he will take to improve food safety, whether he has determined why there have been delays in addressing food-safety concerns and how he will improve the structural organization of food regulators. She also asked for a report on how many food-safety inspections the agency has conducted and how many packages the agency sampled for toxins in the last decade. Califf has until April 25 to respond. CDC SCHEDULES BOOSTER MEETING FOR ADVISERS — The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will meet on April 20 to discuss Covid-19 booster shots, agency spokesperson Kristen Nordlund told Lauren. An agenda is not yet available, but the panel likely will revisit much of what FDA’s own external vaccine advisers hashed out last week, especially the question of who should receive boosters and when. SELECT COMMITTEE SEEKS GIROIR, KADLEC INTERVIEWS — Chair of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) requested documents and transcribed interviews from Trump-era HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir and former Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Robert Kadlec as part of the committee’s investigation into the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. “The Select Subcommittee has collected extensive evidence showing that you were the main official responsible for the revision of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) testing guidance issued in August 2020 so that it stated — contrary to the prevailing scientific consensus — that individuals exposed to the virus did not necessarily need to get a test,” Clyburn wrote to Giroir.
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