How would Texas handle food safety without the USDA and FDA?

The same way it handles much of it now: through Texas agencies that already do this work, scaled up to cover what the federal agencies did. Texas does not have to invent a food-safety system from scratch. It already runs one, and an independent Texas would expand it to fill the federal role.

Texas already inspects its own food

Food safety in Texas is not purely a federal job today. The Texas Department of State Health Services already runs a state meat-safety program that inspects meat and poultry produced and sold within Texas, operating its own inspection regime alongside the federal one. The Texas Department of Agriculture already handles a wide range of agricultural and consumer-protection functions. The bones of a Texas food-safety system are in place and working right now, staffed by Texans.

The federal functions are well understood and reproducible

What the federal agencies do is no mystery. The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service inspects meat, poultry, and eggs. The FDA oversees most other foods, along with drugs and medical products. These are defined, well-documented functions, and many countries run them through their own national agencies at a high standard. An independent Texas would assign these responsibilities to Texas agencies, building on the meat-safety and agricultural-inspection capacity the state already has, and would set food-safety standards answerable to Texans.

Standards stay high because the market demands it

A food-exporting nation has every incentive to maintain rigorous, internationally recognized safety standards, because buyers abroad require them. To keep selling Texas beef, produce, and processed foods into the United States and around the world, Texas would meet the standards those markets expect, often by maintaining equivalence with the systems trading partners already trust. Independence does not create pressure to lower food safety. It creates pressure to keep it high, because that is what keeps the export markets open.

Continuity through the transition

None of this flips overnight. Like every other federal function, food-safety oversight would be handled through the transition, with arrangements to keep inspections running and trade moving while Texas agencies take full ownership. The realistic path is continuity: Texas stands up its full food-safety authority while existing safeguards stay in place, so there is never a gap on the plate.

The bottom line

Texas already inspects its own food and already has the agencies to do it. An independent Texas expands that existing capacity to cover the federal role, holds standards high because its export markets demand it, and manages the handoff so safety never lapses.