In recent months, it's been difficult to avoid the headlines swirling around food recalls in the U.S. One day it's lettuce getting recalled. Another it's blueberries. The next it's rice, and then beef, and so on, until eventually, it's felt like nothing is safe to eat. But is all of this happening simply because we've become better at detecting issues that have always been present, or is there a larger food safety crisis at play?
"I think it's a little bit of both," says Chris Harvey, senior VP of product innovation and industry engagement with risk and claims management company Sedgwick.
Harvey points to the use of better technology over the last decade that has strengthened traceability across supply chains, and helped identify and compile potential risk signals earlier. From digital tracing systems that can link specific food batches to suppliers, to genome sequencing that can match bacteria in patients to specific production facilities, regulators and businesses have more tools than ever at their disposal.
And in fact, through August 18, food recalls issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration were actually down 15% compared to the five-year average for that eight-plus month period, as well as down 29% from the 10-year average. Under the current Trump administration, the FDA has classified around 126 food recalls per month, compared to 135 a month during the Biden administration, and 164 under the first Trump presidency, according to FDA data compiled by USA Today.
However, the wide consensus among most experts in the food safety sector is that the overall number of recalls in a single year isn't always indicative of actual risk.
"Recall counts measure regulatory action, not foodborne disease burden, and the two should not be cited interchangeably," said Illinois Institute of Technology researchers in a September 2026 study that analyzed more than 24,700 U.S. food recalls between 2013 and 2025.
At its essence, disease burden refers to the illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths associated with foodborne illness outbreaks, focusing primarily on the larger impacts than the sheer volume of recalls. And although recall activity can measure how frequently hazards are being detected, it doesn't necessarily offer insight into the severity of any single event. Alternatively, the study posits, measuring disease burden can offer a stronger indicator into whether any single year was better or worse for overall food safety.
In that sense, it can be argued that 2026 has indeed been a more troubling year for food safety in the U.S., just not for the reasons that the frequent recall headlines might have us believe. A recent cyclospora outbreak tied to Taylor Farms lettuce sickened more than 11,000 people across 20 states, and ended up being the third largest foodborne illness outbreak in U.S. history. Separately, a salmonella outbreak traced back to tainted jalapeños from Mexico sickened more than 400 people across 32 states (just shy of the country's 15th largest outbreak), while an E. coli and salmonella outbreak linked to alfalfa sprouts sickened at least 55 people across 15 states.
Behind the scenes, trouble has been brewing at the FDA for years now, dating back to the start of the pandemic in 2020. In an effort to protect inspectors from COVID-19 and comply with newly-enacted travel restrictions, the FDA pulled staff from the field and suspended all foreign inspections. That suspension wasn't lifted until 2022, and the agency still has yet to fully ramp back up. To wit, foreign food site inspections are down nearly 35% since 2019, and fell by 17% between the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years.
Further compounding the issue have been Trump administration cuts to the very agencies entrusted to safeguard American food supplies. Following staffing cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services in April 2025, the FDA was forced to suspend a quality control program for food testing laboratories. Months later, the CDC scaled back its "FoodNet" foodborne disease surveillance program from monitoring eight pathogens to just two, while the number of CDC scientists that track food parasites was reduced from 11 to three. In total, the FDA has shed roughly 20% of its staff since the start of President Donald Trump's second term, while the CDC is down 25%.
In the case of the cyclospora outbreak that has since been traced back to a Taylor Farms facility in Mexico, the intestinal parasite was one of the pathogens the CDC opted to stop monitoring when it made cuts to FoodNet. Inspectors also hadn't conducted a site visit to the Taylor Farms facility since 2019, and only arrived a full month after the recall was announced over the summer. Speaking to PBS, former FDA Deputy Commissioner Frank Yiannas acknowledged that "it took us too long to get boots on the ground," particularly for a recall that necessitated a rapid response, given the severity of the outbreak and the risk of more contaminated lettuce reaching consumers.
This is all occurring in the context of a regulatory landscape that's become increasingly unwieldy, with a February 2026 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) detailing the FDA's struggle to keep pace in recent years.
"(The GAO has) identified examples of FDA not having the capacity to meet, or facing potential challenges in meeting, its oversight responsibilities for multiple product areas," the report warned, citing how since 2020, low compensation and frequent travel have led to widespread attrition among the agency's food investigators. A ProPublica investigation also found that, following Trump administration cuts, inspectors have had to coordinate their own flights, hotels and travel documents, and are currently waiting on a backlog of more than $1 million in unfulfilled travel reimbursements.
Despite these problems, the FDA has continued to take on more responsibilities. In 2009, the agency was tagged to regulate new types of nicotine and tobacco products. Two years later, it was directed to increase its required food safety inspections. In 2022, its scope was again expanded to include regulating recalls for cosmetics. Then along came the pandemic, creating the staffing challenges that persist to this day, which were further exacerbated by the aforementioned Trump administration cuts in 2025.
Looking ahead, the central challenge the U.S. has is ensuring that advances in detecting food safety threats are matched by the capacity to act before more people get sick. Counting recalls alone won't tell Americans whether the food on their plates is any safer. Rather, that reassurance must come from safeguards that can keep the most dangerous pathogens out of people's food altogether.
