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June 12, 2024
Should Consumers Be Worried About All These Product Recalls?
2024 headlines have so far been dominated by grocery product recalls.
In March, Trader Joe’s recalled packages of cashews due to salmonella contamination fears. One month later, the popular retailer issued a similar recall for its basil products for the same concerns.
“We don’t take any chances when it comes to product safety and quality,” the company stated on its website about the recall.
A similar product recall was issued at Walmart stores nationwide last month when the retail giant recalled more than 16,000 pounds of ground beef due to E. coli contamination concerns.
The Pennsylvania-based Cargill Meat Solutions manufactured the beef for Walmart and other stores, but it’s unclear when the E. coli infection was found. So far, there have been no documented health effects from the exposure.
Other product recalls this year include:
- Fresh Start Produce Sales’ recall of cucumbers over salmonella concerns
- ALDI’s recall of four private-label cream cheese spreads
- Hy-Vee’s recall of two private-label cream cheese products
- H-E-B’s ice cream recall for metal contamination
- Palmer Candy’s recall of its products for salmonella contamination
- East West Tea Company’s recall of nearly 1 million Yogi tea bags for pesticide contamination
Overall, U.S. product recalls increased by 8% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the previous quarter. In the first quarter, Sedgwick recorded 909 recalls across five primary industries, the most in a single quarter in over five years.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued 134 recalls in the first quarter of 2024, a 27.6% rise from Q4 2023. In comparison, the number of recalls from the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) in the first quarter decreased by 31.6% to 13. However, the weight of the FSIS recalls did rise by 22.1% to 378,055 pounds.
In the last five years, there have only been three quarters with more FDA recall occurrences. Undeclared allergies accounted for 51 of the total FDA recalls, making them the primary cause of food recalls.
According to Sedgwick, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the USDA, and the FDA are attempting to protect customers and give them accurate information about the food they are buying.
Despite this uptick in recalls, experts say that this increase in product recalls is a sign of a robust system of checks and balances.
“Regulators have started off 2024 as expected, continuing the high rate of enforcement activity and introducing new regulations and rules to improve product safety amidst an ever-growing list of risks,” said Chris Harvey, senior vice president of brand protection for Sedgwick.
There isn’t just one explanation for the rise in recalls because allergies, diseases, and safety issues have always existed, but one possibility is that stricter laws are now in place to encourage more recalls.
The biggest change to food safety regulations in many decades went into effect in 2011 with the passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act, which gave the FDA more power to order manufacturer recalls and implement stricter regulations.
Additional stringent regulations for product safety resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic. According to MasterControl, the FDA had to enact stricter regulations to ensure that items were safe because the agency was forced to conduct a large portion of its testing and inspections remotely during the pandemic’s peak.
“As product recalls reached a seven-year high in 2023, it is clear that strict regulatory enforcement is more than a passing trend. 2024 will see continued oversight from regulators, policymakers, and consumers, making it essential for businesses to plan and practice for product recalls and in-market crises,” Harvey said in Sedgwick’s press release.
Furthermore, according to Sedgwick, businesses could also anticipate further assertive proceedings from the FTC and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in 2024. There’s a chance that 2024 will see fines surpass the record $55.3 million of 2023, based on the $16 million in fines assessed by the CPSC in the first quarter.
Discussion Questions
Are the increased recalls cause for consumer concern?
Is there anything companies should be doing to give more transparency to consumers about the foods they purchase?
Are federal regulatory companies doing all they should be doing to keep consumers safe?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Rachelle King
Retail Industry Thought Leader
David Biernbaum
Founder & President, David Biernbaum & Associates LLC
Neil Saunders
Managing Director, GlobalData
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There are lots of reasons for the increase in food recalls. Foremost among them are more complex and disintermediated food supply chains, which are also often more geographically disperse than they used to be. This makes control much harder and provides more opportunities for things to go wrong or for standards to slip. I also think the FDA is overstretched and probably isn’t carrying out enough inspections and checks. Unfortunately, that means there is a greater onus on consumers to take care in what they buy and where they buy it from.
Gee I don’t know why everything in the world can’t be perfect…like it used to be! Wait, what… Recalls – within limits, obviously – show the System is working. Paradoxically, you should be more worried if there aren’t any (since it wouldn’t be because there’s nothing wrong)
The problem is that the recalls are increasingly arising from people getting sick which is then traced back to bad food. So it’s reactive rather than proactive. FDA data shows the agency is conducting far fewer inspections that it did pre-pandemic.
It’s hard to imagine how consumers won’t concern themselves with the current rash of recalls for salmonella, metal contamination, and pesticides, among other things, but there are no pragmatic regulations that government can institute that will prevent such things from occurring as often as they do.
Items recalled are still a very low fractional percentage, so there is not practical reason for consumers to be overly worried, and consumers do know that once a problem is discovered, there will be announcements, recalls, and shelf removal.
The real responsibility must be with manufacturers, processors, and distributors. Every conceivable action must be taken to make certain products from all batches are tested before they are boxed and shipped. I know quite directly and personally that many companies go through painstaking gyrations for quality control, and have yet to have a recall of any type.
But no government regulation, policy, or solution will be effective. – Db
This article suggests that more recalls are due to more regulatory oversight. However, as a consumer I’d expect regulatory oversight to prevent the need for recalls by pulling back impacted products before they ship.
Otherwise, the recall is only as effective as the average consumers ability to recognize that products they purchased have been impacted. Since we are generally conditioned to believe that bad things happen to other people, in other places but not in our homes or in our communities, the average consumer may not realize if/when they have purchased recalled product before stores could pull it off the shelf.
So, I do not agree that more recalls are showing regulatory agencies are doing their jobs. This only shows a problem was caught after it shipped. Which places a burden on both the retailer and manufacturer while kindling distrust from consumers.
Given all the advances in supply chain and logistics, is there no way to get better at catching a problem before it goes out the door?
While the rise in product recalls may alarm consumers, it shows the effectiveness of systems designed to protect consumer safety.
The grocery sector has come a long way with product data-sharing across global and local trading partners. AI will only accelerate and improve the transparency of these communications for brand integrity, retailer compliance and overall risk mitigation.
Historically, the inspection arms of the USDA and FDA have been notoriously underfunded, and regulations have been lax. Today’s discussion suggests progress in this area has been made in the last decade, which is a big positive.
On the other side, those who grow and handle the products have not caught up nor appreciate the responsibility they have. Food safety is not likely a primary objective of agricultural conglomerates in the U.S. Their measure is only how it affects the bottom line. It is certainly the responsibility of the purveyors to provide “good” products. Contamination is the leading cause and that is largely controllable. But, even if the purveyors are as diligent as they should be, some problems may slip through.
What does concern me is the Walmart example of 16,000 pounds of ground beef. How could that much get into the system before being discovered?