By Steven Grossman
Chuck Jolley of Food Safety News recently wrote to me and several others asking: With so many high-profile recalls in 2024, have the federal, state, and local institutions responsible for oversight suddenly failed us? Or is something else happening?
I imagined that he would get a range of answers from “yes, the sky is falling” to “it’s just random fluctuation.”
I do not believe either of these are true, so I provided a middle-of-the-road answer based on my own experiences.
Years ago, I was involved in a project to develop metrics of success for certain Food and Drug Administration activities. We discovered that sound data and observations can still be ambiguous in interpretation. If outbreaks have increased, that may be evidence of an overtaxed, under-resourced and underperforming system. However, it may also reflect better oversight, increased voluntary disclosure and recall, and greater producer and consumer awareness of food safety requirements.
Much to my surprise, all six of the experts Jolley consulted gave similar answers. We expressed ourselves in different ways reflecting our different perspectives, but no one said 2024 was a disaster and no one said that 2024 was just noise in the system.
Professor Keith Warriner said: “We are not seeing a rise in recalls but in the number of outbreaks detected. . . . This has been achieved by advances in enabling technologies such as DNA sequencing, artificial intelligence and traceability.”
Thomas Gremillion of Consumer Federation of America said: “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 increasing illnesses, but the uncertainty around whether food safety is getting better or worse is itself unsettling.”
Professor Marion Nestle said: “I view recalls as indications that the regulatory part of the system is working, at least to some extent. If anything, there are not enough of them, and they do not come quickly enough.”
David Acheson, former FDA Associate Commissioner for Foods, said: “My personal view is that, although there are always companies that struggle and don’t do things right, the food supply continues to get incrementally safer relative to many other factors that impact the likelihood of an outbreak being detected.”
Phyllis Entis of eFoodAlert.com said: “There is nothing like a cluster of high-profile, high-volume recalls to catch the public’s attention. In fact, the number of recalls (FDA and FSIS data combined) due to food pathogens has not altered significantly in the last three years: 115 in 2022, 102 in 2023, and 127 in 2024.”
What do I take away from the six experts who are quoted in Chuck’s article?
Trends in the number of recalls do not tell you whether things have gotten better or worse.
There is a remarkable absence of finger-pointing — a sign that various interests are willing to work together toward the common good.
There is no better time than now to create a comprehensive plan for improving food safety at the federal, state, and local levels — and push forward together as a community for its funding and implementation.
About the author: Stephen Grossman is the author of “FDA Matters: The Grossman FDA Report.” For additional commentary about FDA issues sign up to receive Groosman’s weekly columns at www.fdamatters.com.
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