Report blames producers, regulators for rise in food recalls
Source: Scripps News
Posted at 12:25 PM, Apr 26, 2024 and last updated 12:25 PM, Apr 26, 2024
The Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture issue recall alerts nearly daily for various food products that could be contaminated, mislabeled, or contain some other sort of hazard. According to a new report, there has been a significant increase in such recalls.
The U.S. Public Interest Research Group found that the number of recalls issued in 2023 was 8% higher than in 2022. The biggest culprit for the increase is undeclared allergens. PIRG reported a 27% increase in recalls related to undeclared allergens in 2023. One reason for the increase is that sesame is now among the allergens companies must label.
The report found that 49.2% of all food recalls in 2023 were related to undeclared allergens. The next largest reason for food recalls was food being potentially contaminated with listeria. Listeria was responsible for 15% of 2023 food recalls. Foods potentially contaminated with salmonella were responsible for 8.6% of food recalls.
“Most problems with food should be easy to avoid. Food producers and packagers just need to focus more on cleanliness and disclose allergens that could make people sick or kill them,” said Teresa Murray, Consumer Watchdog at U.S. Public Interest Research Group. “We should not have to worry about finding shards of metal and plastic or undeclared allergens in the food on our plates. It’s baffling that manufacturers aren’t properly inspecting equipment, testing food and properly labeling packages before they end up on grocery store shelves.”
Read more: https://www.scrippsnews.com/life/food-and-drink/report-blames-producers-regulators-for-rise-in-food-recalls
Link to U.S. Public Interest Research Group REPORT - Food for Thought 2024
= new reply since forum marked as read
The excerpt that mentions this -
In the 13 years since the Food Safety Modernization Act became law, the FDA has issued mandatory food recalls only three times; in 2013, 2014 and 2018.
All of this points to three big problems with food safety:
Tracking down the source of food poisoning takes weeks, months or sometimes years. Once a problem food is identified, recalls often take too long to issue because regulators can’t mandate. When recalls are announced, consumers often don’t find out about them in a timely fashion, if ever.
(snip)
https://pirg.org/edfund/resources/food-for-thought-2024/
I know it took forever for Congress for to finally give FDA (and others) the authority to institute a mandatory recall for foods (similar to the authority they had for years to initiate one for drugs/medical devices), something that (IIRC) Congress member Diana DeGette (D-CO) spearheaded, but they have generally deferred to the company doing voluntary recalls, which generally happens probably 90+ % of the time.
What makes it difficult for tracing is that we import so much.
PIRG is normally always riding herd on the agencies that handle food (FDA, USDA, Fish & Wildlife Service) anyway so the report is nothing new.
I have seen far more media announcements for recalls than in the past and their stats are showing more recalls happening in general (but it could also be there's more "awareness" of them making it seem like there's more overall).
