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Mindy Brashears Nominated as USDA’s Under Secretary for Food Safety

June 18, 2025

It’s the same post she held in the previous Trump administration at the start of the pandemic, when she kept meat plants open despite Covid infections.

Dave Fusaro

Mindy Brashears has been nominated by President Trump to be USDA’s under secretary for food safety, the same post she held in the previous Trump administration.

Her nomination was forwarded by the president to the Senate Committee on Agriculture on June 2. No hearing dates so far have been scheduled.

Brashears, who grew up on a cattle and cotton farm in Texas, was USDA’s under secretary for food safety in the final year of Trump’s first administration, March 23, 2020 – Jan. 20, 2021, which coincided with the start of the Covid pandemic. Brashears worked to keep American meat plants operating. She was both lauded for maintaining the food supply but criticized as meat processing plants became epicenters for Covid infection and deaths.

Following her time at USDA, she returned to her role as professor of food microbiology and food safety at Texas Tech University, where she is the director for the International Center for Food Industry Excellence.

She will serve under Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who was Trump’s chief of domestic policy in his first term.

About the Author

Dave Fusaro | Editor in Chief

Dave Fusaro has served as editor in chief of Food Processing magazine since 2003. Dave has 30 years experience in food & beverage industry journalism and has won several national ASBPE writing awards for his Food Processing stories. Dave has been interviewed on CNN, quoted in national newspapers and he authored a 200-page market research report on the milk industry. Formerly an award-winning newspaper reporter who specialized in business writing, he holds a BA in journalism from Marquette University. Prior to joining Food Processing, Dave was Editor-In-Chief of Dairy Foods and was Managing Editor of Prepared Foods.