Why Is the US FDA Having So Many Food Recalls? - DTNS WEEKEND

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3:08Welcome to the DTNS Weekend Edition, gratefully provided to you and thanks for your support of this fine program. It becomes fine because you support it. So that's why we keep working all the way through the weekend to keep you safe from food. That's right. This weekend, we are talking about the unusual, or is it, number of recalls from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Nikki is joining me to talk about this. Thank you, Dr. Nikki, for talking to us. Again, you're the best. Well, thanks for having me. If I'm honest, I went to look this up for myself, and then I thought, this can be a segment.

3:42Yes, the best segments start that way. So let's go simple. What's the deal? What's going on at the FDA? What's going on? I mean, you may have noticed there's been, it feels like a lot of food recalls. There have been 26 in the US. I should state, I don't know what's going on abroad, but there have been 26 recalls in August alone. And you've probably heard about the onions, jalapenos, lettuce, the poop lettuce, popsicles, eggs, rice, and all that. How did lettuce become poop lettuce, but not poopsicles? Because the popsicles have glass in them. Oh yeah, that's, yeah, that just doesn't work. It's not as funny.

4:17It's actually quite sad. So I know you looked at the numbers and I know everyone thinks like, oh, there's so many. It's worse this year. Is it? Are there actually more recalls than usual? So the answer is it's complicated. There have been 162 recalls so far in 2026. That's about half of the 320 that were reported in 2025. We're about halfway through the year, so it's not really that different. On the other hand, there's also been a list of 21 foodborne illness investigations done by the FDA. Sorry, that was for 2025. In 2026, we are at about 18. So maybe a bit high, but also not crazy outside of average.

5:01Really, the issue here is the scale and severity of the outbreak. So you have heard of the poop lettuce, the cyclospirosis outbreak, because it affected so many people. It's affected over 28 ,000 people, resulted in about 800 hospitalizations and maybe a few deaths. I say maybe because there are still investigations ongoing because the outbreak is still ongoing. So that is the largest cyclospora outbreak ever recorded. And maybe, depending on how much data we get, the largest foodborne illness outbreak ever or in the top three. And like I said, we're lacking a bit more data, but it is at a big scale.

5:39And that's why we have to we have to consider it over before we can say how big it actually got. Right. Because we're in the middle of it still. Exactly. And that makes sense to me. So not necessarily more recalls, but definitely something that is going to catch your attention because of the scale of it. So you're going to hear about it more. And when you hear about it more, it seems like there is more. And because of that scale, it's it's a more severe problem. And so it affects people more, which means you're more likely to know someone or be someone affected by it than than in previous recalls.

6:12Why did why why are we having these? Well, so you may have heard that there and we probably covered it actually on DTNS last summer, I think. But last year, the administration laid off around 3000 workers at the CDC. That's about a 28 percent reduction of the workforce. Also around 3K at the Food and Drug Administration and around 1000 at Food Inspection Services. This may ring some bells. So because there are fewer expert staff members, there are also a lot of retirements. If you remember, as part of these reductions of like kind of pushing people into retirement, companies now have less regulatory oversight.

6:48There's just less people to do that. There's less eyes. Yeah. Yeah. There's also been a delay in implementing new laws that require companies to comply with food and safety regulations, which would help regulators track where the food is coming from and where it's going during an outbreak, which would be nice to know. That could help shorten the outbreak if you know where it's going. Yeah, or catch it early. And that's not really being enforced right now. Yeah. And importantly, there was a big scaling back of a surveillance warning system called FoodNet in July. So right before the outbreak, the cyclospora outbreak started, and they claim that it's due to a lack of funding.

7:26So FoodNet is supposed to track infections and specifically eight. It used to track eight infections, including cyclospora, salmonella and E. coli. But now it's reduced to only tracking salmonella and E. coli. And the other tracking ones are optional. It's kind of like your local health department decides whether they want to track it or not. It's no longer mandatory. And the budget cuts that went along with this kind of job reductions also reduce about$5 billion in CDC grants that would go to kind of helping out public and local health departments. So that's also not helpful. So kind of a bit of a reduction overall.

8:06Yeah. So it sounds to me like government wanted to save money. It decided to save money in lots of areas, of course, but one of those being FDA, which shifted the system from being preventative to being more reactive. Is that fair? As preventative as it was, because you're not looking for cyclospora anymore. Yeah, I don't know how much thought was put into that. I'll just say that they determined that these infectious agents maybe are not that interesting to track and decided to stop tracking them. And then that probably. Yeah, I'm not I'm not even ever going to get into the world of intentionality.

8:46Yeah, I'm looking at like the system seems to have shifted, whether by design or not. Yeah. From being preventative, like let's stop things to like, well, now we're going to be reactive. Yeah, maybe they've been forced into being reactive because that's all they can do. Yeah, because what you're telling me is they cut the number of people looking for things before they start, but we still have the system of reacting to it. We still have the recall system. We have it. It's just less staffed. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the current recalls in the U.S. And granted, if you're not in the U.S., you're probably less interested in this directly.

9:22But it may be a good example of just like, oh, OK, so these are the kinds of things that means. If you're like, okay, yeah. What, what got, what got through, uh, that they're reacting to now. Yeah. And it's going to be a bit of a list, but I still thought it was interesting. And I want everybody to note that recalls are state specific. So check whether your state is actually impacted by that is a very good point. Uh, because I had lots of, I had to have lots of conversation with friends and family with the cyclospora that were like, yes, it's real. Yes. It's bad. No, it's not where you live. So you can still go buy lettuce at your grocery store for now, but check, keep checking.

9:59So yeah, that's good to keep in mind. Speaking of the cyclospora, that's the number one on the list. So lettuce has been recalled since mid-July. Cyclospora, by the way, it's a parasitic bacteria, and this has been affecting about half the country. So look at your state. Around the same time were jalapenos. They have a salmonella contamination. This is in 32 states, so that one's pretty widespread. Frozen blueberries, that's one that affects my state. recalled for E. coli contamination with possibility of death. So that is a class one recall. Putting that in your head because there's a few class ones.

10:32This is only in eight states though. Alfalfa sprouts recalled for E. coli and salmonella in 15 states. Eggs also a class one for salmonella in six states. So this means that basically the quantity of salmonella or other contaminant that they detected is high enough that if you are the one unlucky person that consumes one of these, you have the possibility of death. So they have to report that. Let's see. Frozen rice contaminated with foreign materials. Unsure what those are in 13 states. Dog food for salmonella and metal contamination. Popsicles recalled for glass contamination. Some of these are just nationwide because it's just like a distributor based thing.

11:15And finally, pistachio nut butter, also a class one from Walmart specifically for salmonella contamination in 19 states. Yeah. So again, when we read a list like this, it can make you go, oh, my gosh, that sounds horrible. And as Nikki said earlier, the number of recalls isn't necessarily different than last year. We could have done a list very similar to this last year and would have sounded as scary. But it sounds like we have maybe a few more class ones this time around. that that is the impression that i'm getting as well yeah yeah um and it's also food that a lot of people eat and like lettuce is so widespread and goes to a lot of like fast food restaurants so i think that's also another it's the type of food as well it's not just like this one weird like the nut butter thing like who eats pistachio right right that one's fine i mean someone does someone out there right now is like i eat it it's not in like every single thing you but it may not be taco bell yeah yeah exactly episode prep gets messy when research slack threads and script trackers are all in different places.

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15:34So how does the FDA know when a food needs to be recalled? How does that process work? Yeah, I looked this up because I didn't know and I thought I was curious. So one of the key tools that the U.S. food safety system uses is called PulseNet. This is part of a national laboratory network. So it's a combination of really like a network to connect different people. Once you have multiple detected systems at a local level, it will go and notify the state. And then if there are multiple states, then it goes through this whole network to detect an outbreak and track it. And during an outbreak investigation, scientists will randomly sample different foods on maybe different chains or even at like a restaurant or in a supermarket.

16:16And they will do something called whole genome sequencing. And basically, they're trying to identify the DNA fingerprint of different categories of bacteria. So right now, E. coli and salmonella with the other ones being optional, like we mentioned. I will note that Tom did bring this up. PulseNet has not been kind of experiencing any budget cuts, but it has been affected by a few of the staffing cuts that we mentioned. And a little bit more clarity on that DNA fingerprinting, in case you weren't familiar. This is the kind of thing that you use for like a crime scene investigation or finding your cousin.

16:54So it's very like widespread technique, but basically you only need a small sample of the material. You treat it with chemicals to separate out the DNA and then break the DNA up into little pieces that you amplify. And once you have enough, you can kind of quantify what pieces of DNA are in there. And basically based on the sequence of those pieces, You can create this fingerprint of your genome, whether it's a bacteria or a person, and then you compare it to known samples. So you just take a piece of lattice, stick it in the machine, see if the E. coli fingerprint shows up in there, basically.

17:28Yeah. So it sounds to me like it would be reasonable to advocate for a shift back to more proactive measures and come up with a way to make sure that something like PulseNet isn't missing things like cyclospore. I mean, that feels like the smoking gun to me. And I'm sure some people felt like it was a smoking gun in that situation. But it is something where you said, let's stop checking for this. And then we, you know, pretty fast had a pretty, pretty wide outbreak. So maybe we should go back to checking for those. there's some because you did this and thank you for doing this I feel like there's some tangible policy proposals that anyone can say we need to do this this isn't about what you believe this is about best practices and I haven't seen any well I don't know the FDA hasn't been very open about what they're going to do next to address this other than like we're dealing with it but I would like to see a policy change specifically for the cyclospora or maybe just go back to tracking the eight ones that we were tracking before.

18:35Right. That seems like one of the simplest things you could do is just be able to try to catch things before they become a problem. And also, I think making companies regulate, like forcing them to follow the regulations and actually like applying that law that we voted into effect. Because right now they're kind of self-regulating and that there's no real motive for them to not do that other than, yes, they're affected by the callbacks, but not necessarily. Self-regulation can work in a lot of situations. I feel like with food, it's such a low margin industry. The pressures are such that it really is going to make it hard for you to not fudge things.

19:11Yeah. And some of these companies, they distribute to the entire country and they make all the kinds of food in one place. So it can get cross-contaminated pretty quickly. One mistake gets amplified in that situation. Literally amplified because it's battery. All right. So last thing before we go, what can we do? We're not entirely powerless as consumers. What do you recommend? Well, if you're into local politics, why not propose some new regulations? Yeah, propose some policy changes. Absolutely. But really, at a smaller scale, just first of all, keep an eye on the recall information for your state.

19:46It's unfortunate that you have to, but not bad practice to start doing. Properly wash and store your food. So store it at the right temperature that it's supposed to be stored. Wash your hands in between handling food, different kinds of food. So now that includes like leafy greens, fruits and veg as well. And if you're lucky, you might have a garden and you can grow your own poop-free, parasite-free lettuce. Yeah, I mean, that's not for everybody. But if it's for you, that's a great way to avoid this. Although you are then responsible for regulating yourself. You have to do your own inspections.

20:18Doing your own inspections and washing your lettuce. So keep that in mind. But yeah, I think for me personally, one of the biggest ones here is making sure to properly wash and store food. Frankly, COVID made sure that I'm always washing my hands. So I'm not as worried about changing behavior there. But there's a lot of like, you know, you buy a bag of lettuce and it says it's been washed. You might have trusted that in the past. And I'm not trusting that now. So that's something to keep in mind. Nikki, thanks so much for digging into this and sharing what you found with us. Happy to help. And yeah, glad to be here.

20:55And I hope that nobody gets sick. Yeah, exactly. Like everybody stay safe out there. And don't panic. Do look and make sure you are in a state that is recalled. Just check the numbers. Because you don't want to not be eating fruits and vegetables. They're healthy for you. The point of this segment was to not panic, to give you the numbers and to be informed. Exactly. Dr. Nikki, where can people find more of what you do these days? Well, I am over at NicoleAckerman.com and same handle on Blue Sky. And if you want to hear more science and tech, you can head over to our new show, Technical Tea. I'm co-host there with Wente Dow.

21:30We have a new episode coming out next week. So come check it out. Very exciting. Go check it out. Technical Tea, wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks, everybody, for supporting DTNS as well. We'll see you on Tuesday because there's a holiday in the U.S. on Monday. Back on Tuesday with regular episodes. Talk to you then.

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