From milk to meat to vegetables, food recalls will skyrocket in 2024.
Food safety experts suggest that consumer demand for convenience may be part of the problem. Convenience brings risk. The extra steps required to bring the further prepared food to the table create more opportunities for pathogenic contamination. Increased globalization also means more opportunities for uninspected or poorly inspected foods to enter the market.
Not so fun fact: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 48 million people in the United States get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die from foodborne illness every year.
Some notable events fueled fears that recalls would become epidemic. Boar’s Head Provisions kicked off the summer season with a recall of more than 7 million pounds of ready-to-eat meat products due to possible Listeria contamination. The CDC said the contaminated meat caused at least 57 people to be hospitalized and 10 deaths.
A later E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounders caused an uproar when the fast-food giant temporarily halted sales of the popular burger. More than 100 people in 14 states were infected and one person died. Fresh onions were determined to be the cause and McDonald’s removed them from their menu. Making the recall an even bigger news story, Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut quickly followed suit.
Later, organic carrots were recalled due to E. coli infection. Also recalls of fresh eggs and various brands of cucumbers due to the presence of Salmonella has further alarmed the public.
And just in time for the New Year’s holidays, the California Department of Food and Agriculture has issued a statewide recall of raw milk produced and packaged by Valley Milk Simply Bottled after the H5N1 bird flu virus was found in samples from a bulk tank at the dairy farm. company. . The state had forced Raw Farm LLC to recall two batches of raw milk in late November and early December, also due to bird flu contamination.
What’s going on? These high-profile recalls have captured the public’s attention and response. A recent Gallup poll found that more than 40 percent of respondents had little or no confidence that our food is safely regulated. Have the federal, state, and local agencies responsible for oversight suddenly failed us? Or is something else happening?
This is what the experts say:
Keith Warrinerprofessor of food sciences, University of Guelph
We are not seeing an increase in the number of recalls, but in the number of outbreaks detected. There are an estimated 48 million cases of foodborne illness every year. Yet only a fraction can be attributed to a specific source, not to mention the number caused by unspecified agents. This has been achieved through advances in enabling technologies such as DNA sequencing, artificial intelligence and traceability.
Just like telescopes, developments ensure that we can see the first stars in the universe. The enabling technologies reveal weaknesses in the food safety system. In particular, outbreak investigations show that food safety plans were not implemented as written. Third-party audits lack objectivity, and government inspections lack enforcement. Regaining consumer trust will require coordination between accountants and government inspectorates, even if it means navigating the minefields of confidentiality.
Ultimately, it is food business owners who are responsible for food safety, and they must embrace their own enabling technologies. These include sanitization technologies, effective sanitation and artificial intelligence to monitor the food safety management system.
Thomas GremillionDirector of Food Policy, Consumer Federation of America
The concerns about all the recent recalls in the headlines, not to mention the long-term trends, are understandable. For now, this may be a story of better surveillance rather than an increase in disease, but the uncertainty about whether food safety is getting better or worse is worrying in itself. It also reminds us that we need to invest in public health infrastructure.
We also need to keep in mind that as the food industry becomes more and more concentrated, just a few people in leadership positions at major companies like Boar’s Head and McDonald’s have increasing power over how much should be spent to protect consumers from foodborne illness.
Marion Nestlé, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health, Emerita, New York University I view recalls as indications that the regulatory part of the system is working, at least to some extent. In any case, there are not enough of them and they are not coming fast enough. The causes are obvious: growing vegetables right next to the increasing numbers and size of CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operations), meat and dairy operations, none of which can do much to prevent pathogen-laden animal waste from leaching into nearby soil and water ends up.
The FDA can monitor vegetable farms, but not CAFOs, and the USDA has no legal authority to conduct testing in those places. If food manufacturers can’t or won’t do what they need to do to prevent pathogens, government agencies must step in, but they lack sufficient legal authority (USDA) or resources (FDA) to do so. In addition, we have increasing consumer distrust of government oversight and decision-making on safety issues, with raw milk being an example.
I am always in favor of strict regulations; it creates a level playing field and promotes confidence in the system. If only.
Steven A. Grossman, J.D., Author, FDA Matters: The Grossman FDA Report (www.fdamatters.com) and former executive director of the Alliance for a Stronger FDA.
Years ago I was involved in a project to develop success measures for certain FDA activities. We found that good data and observations can still be ambiguous in interpretation. If outbreaks have increased, it may be evidence of an overburdened, underfunded, and underperforming system. However, it may also reflect better surveillance, more voluntary disclosure and recall, and greater awareness among producers and consumers of food safety requirements.
I don’t know if food is more or less safe today than it was five years ago. What matters is our collective commitment, working together, to improve our food safety systems.
David Acheson Founder and CEO of The Acheson Group (TAG)
Labeling the year as ‘unusual’ in a recent op-ed Acheson wrote: “Looking at the numbers, I haven’t seen a huge shift or increase. It can pop up a bit, but that’s typical over the years; it happens. So my personal view is that while there are always going to be businesses that are struggling and not doing things right, the food supply is becoming safer compared to many other factors that influence the likelihood of an outbreak being detected.
Let me explain. Historically, we have developed our genetic technology, connecting an outbreak strain here to a strain there. We’re getting better at that, so small clusters and outbreaks that might have gone unnoticed in the past are being picked up, noticed, attributed to a food product and responded to.
Phyllis Entis, MSc,.eFoodAlert.comThere’s nothing like a cluster of high-profile, large-scale recalls to get the public’s attention. In fact, the number of recalls (FDA and FSIS data combined) due to food pathogens has not changed significantly over the past three years: 115 in 2022, 102 in 2023, and 127 in 2024. That said, the failure of the FDA and FSIS to ensure the security of America’s food supply has not suddenly failed.
In my opinion, this failure has developed over a period of years – even decades. It is well past time for the United States to consolidate all federal food safety regulatory responsibilities under one agency and give that agency an adequate budget and a seat at the Cabinet table.
Important links:
Breaking the cycle of food safety failures | FSN
Bacteria recalls will reach their highest level in five years in 2024 | Consumer Affairs