The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that the U.S. food supply remains “one of the safest in the world,” following a number of foodborne illness outbreaks affecting products ranging from organic carrots has cold meats has McDonald’s Quarter pounds. E.coli, listeria and other contaminants have sickened thousands of people and forced a number of recalls in recent months.
But despite these high-profile examples, data cited by the FDA suggests that recalls were not unusually high last year.
For the fiscal year that ended in September, the agency’s food and cosmetics branch considered 179 recalls to be related to the highest-risk problem classification, such as potential contamination with bacteria or undeclared allergens.
This is an increase from the 145 high-risk recalls recorded in 2023, but less than the 185 recalls recorded by the agency in 2022. There were 167 high-risk recalls in 2019.
That classification includes the recall of tens of thousands of cases of onions processed by Taylor Farms that were removed earlier this fall after authorities suspected they were responsible for a fatal accident. Outbreak of E. coli linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounder burgers that made people sick more than a hundred people.
“Our ultimate goal is for the industry to do its part to ensure that the foods it brings to market are not adulterated or mislabeled. Recalls allow foods to be quickly removed from the market if there is a problem. Outbreak advisories provide the public with important food safety information,” an FDA spokesperson said in a statement.
The spokesperson also highlighted The Economist’s report measuring global food security. The U.S. food supply is “one of the safest in the world” and ranks “highest in food security in 2022,” the spokesperson said.
In fact, the FDA suggested, the number of recalls is an indicator of how well the safety system is working.
“The occurrence of recalls and outbreaks means that manufacturers, importers and distributors are monitoring problems and taking action when they detect a problem,” the FDA spokesperson said.
An increase in illnesses in CDC data – but also an increase in testing
Figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that the number of high-profile recalls has increased compared to last year, but not by much.
So far this year, 10 “multistate foodborne outbreak advisories” have been issued by the CDC. Last year there were nine reviews. 24 notices were issued in 2018, the most in any year in the last decade.
Infections from foodborne outbreak culprits like Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, or STEC, have climbed to at least 13,962 this year, according to CDC records.
Around 13,140 had been reported by health services this time last year and 12,119 had been reported by this time in 2019.
Foodborne illnesses linked to other germs have also increased across the country in recent years, reports from the CDC’s FoodNet system suggest, although improvements in how patients are tested for these germs may help explain some of that increase .
“Laboratory technology is changing and that impacts what we see in surveillance data. When lab tests get faster, they get more specific, they get better in other ways. That makes the data a “a little less comparable,” Sharon Shea, senior director of food safety at the Association of Public Health Laboratories, told CBS News.
Shea, who also worked as a microbiologist in hospital labs as well as public health labs, said other ways public health departments and doctors respond to foodborne outbreaks have also improved.
In part, this is a time-saver in favor of “molecular” panel tests that can be performed by hospitals and clinical laboratories for a wide range of germs, instead of one-off tests for specific pathogens, which were deployed after 2012.
Labs in the CDC-led PulseNet network have also moved to “whole genome sequencing,” Shea said — a more precise approach to refining the unique genetic fingerprint that can link different cases together for investigators. These links can be crucial to discovering common foods eaten by sick people during an outbreak.
“The most avoidable and unnecessary deaths”
Food safety advocates outside of government say the United States still has much room for improvement when it comes to food safety.
“It doesn’t help to say ‘Americans have the safest food in the world’ when people are dying from it. baby carrots” said Sarah Sorscher, manager of regulatory affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
Sorscher acknowledged that public health departments have improved in their investigation of outbreaks, but cautioned that only a fraction of foodborne illnesses are still resolved.
“Our public health system is getting better at solving outbreaks thanks to advances in whole genome sequencing and artificial intelligence. So we may just be seeing more of the iceberg now that it a few years ago,” she said.
Staffing shortages and food safety concerns have also led to an artificial decline in the number of recalls and reported illnesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sorscher said.
“Our food supply is not as safe as it was five years ago. Anyone who has gone to the grocery store or searched their refrigerator to see which onions and carrots in the produce drawer are subject to the latest recall knows,” said Scott Faber, senior vice president of government relations at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group.
Faber pointed to a previous report of a rebound in food recalls after 2020, based on data from the FDA as well as the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
FDA inspections of food facilities are not a congressional mandate, the Environmental Working Group argued. They also criticized the agency for not requiring testing of irrigation water sprayed on crops, which can pose a risk of contamination from nearby animal feeding operations.
“A bit like washing your hands or not cutting your vegetables on the same cutting board as your chicken, these are just common sense measures to reduce the risk of foodborne illness. And these are unnecessary deaths the most preventable ones imaginable,” Faber said.
