Are we seeing more food recalls these days?

One of the big questions so many people have raised in recent weeks: Are we seeing more food recalls? The answer: No. And even if we were, it wouldn’t automatically mean our food is less safe.

What we are definitely seeing this year: A huge increase in the number of illnesses caused by contaminated food. Then when you add in headlines that include well-known brands such as Taco Bell, Chipotle, Walmart and Whole Foods, it does create the impression of more recalls. It’s important to stress that the annual number of recalls isn’t an indicator of whether our food is safe or not. Let’s look at some facts:

• The big cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms has caused at least 12,883 illnesses, 570 hospitalizations and two deaths across 21 states as of Sept. 11, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
  
• This foodborne illness outbreak is the largest ever involving cyclospora and may be the third-largest foodborne illness outbreak of any kind on record, according to our research.
• This is one of five cyclospora outbreaks (updated from seven originally) regulators are investigating from this summer, which as of Sept. 15 have caused at least 19,883  illnesses and 1,064 hospitalizations in 49 states plus Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. As of Sept. 8, investigators were still analyzing 6,594  additional cases of cyclosporiasis, for a possible total case count exceeding 26,000. By comparison, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last year tallied 1,180 cases from May 1 to Aug. 31 – the typical season for cyclospora. We had two identified outbreaks in 2025, one in July and one in August.
• The Food and Drug Administration announced on Aug. 13 that it has “initiated an onsite inspection and sampling at Taylor Farms de Mexico in coordination with Mexican officials.” The location was last inspected seven years ago, according to reports.
• For years, federal food regulators have been incredibly behind on inspections at foreign facilities, according to targets set by Congress as part of the Food Safety Modernization Act. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report in 2025 found the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducted an average of 917 inspections of foreign food facilities each year from fiscal year 2018 through 2023. 
• The federal government cut the number of workers focused on food safety in the last 18 months, including nearly wiping out the CDC lab that responds to cyclospora outbreaks. Some experts and lawmakers maintain that funding cuts have hurt both federal and state food safety programs and put us at risk of foodborne illness outbreaks.

So where does this leave us? We believe many changes are needed ASAP to reduce our risk. Here are the ones at the top of our list:

1. Congress should reinstitute the effective date of the Food Traceability Rule. 

This rule sets traceability recordkeeping requirements for foods most vulnerable to foodborne illness, such as leafy greens (including iceberg lettuce, the source of the current cyclospora outbreak), peppers (including jalapeño peppers that are part of the new Salmonella outbreak), soft cheeses (part of an ongoing Listeria outbreak that has sickened 12 people, hospitalized 10 and killed one), fresh-cut fruits and vegetables, cucumbers, herbs, melons, ready-to-eat deli salads and other foods we see recalled frequently.

The Salmonella outbreak involving jalapeño peppers has been a drip drip drip of new products to avoid. So far, 431 people in more than 30 states have become ill; 57 of those were hospitalized.

Here’s the timeline:
June 28: The number of new illnesses every day started hitting double digits; 10 to 32 people got sick every day through July 13.
July 20: Chipotle switched jalapeño suppliers in affected stores.
July 28: Qdoba stopped serving jalapeños.
Aug. 5: The FDA and CDC identified Coast Citrus Distributors as the source. It provided jalapeños to distributors, restaurants, and food service companies.
Aug. 8: USDA issued a public health alert for 18 meat and poultry products containing jalapeños sold at H-E-B, Wawa and other stores.
Aug. 9: 20 products distributed by Taylor Farms and sold at Hannaford, Kroger, Stop and Shop, Target, Trader Joe’s, Walmart and Whole Foods were recalled.
Aug. 12: Whole Foods recalled 10 different varieties of dips, guacamole and salsas.
Aug. 14: NatureBest Precut & Produce LLC recalled 18 salsas, stuffed mushrooms and soup mixes containing jalapeños.
Aug. 14: Salata recalled salad dressing sold at H-E-B stores in one state.
Aug. 17: FDA announced that Hardie’s Fresh Foods recalled packaged jalapeños.
Aug. 19: Illness count increased to 431 people, with 57 hospitalized (up from 345 illnesses and 36 hospitalizations on Aug. 4).
Aug. 21: FDA says “downstream recalls are being conducted.” Here’s the list. (But it’s missing some of the recalls posted by the FDA.)

The three key dates here are July 20, Aug. 8 and Aug. 17.

July 20 was when Chipotle switched suppliers. … Aug. 8 (19 days later) was when regulators first alerted the public to some products to avoid. … As of Aug. 17 (28 days later), products were still getting recalled. How many of the 431 people got sick needlessly during that time?

If the government would require companies to more quickly track the sales and uses of recalled foods, then other restaurants, groceries and food manufacturers that use those items as ingredients could find out sooner and pull those products and alert customers.

As we found in our Food for Thought 2026 report, 10 recalls in 2025 led to 31 additional recalls because they used a contaminated ingredient. All but two of those involved foods on the Traceability List, meaning subsequent recalls may have been delayed by the lack of tracing information.

This Traceability Rule was published on Nov. 21, 2022 and took effect on Jan. 20, 2023 with a compliance deadline of Jan. 20, 2026. Then in 2025, the government delayed the deadline until July 20, 2028. We can’t wait that long.

2. Funding and staffing for federal and state food safety programs should be restored and perhaps expanded.

Adequate resources may have prevented the cyclospora outbreak and other outbreaks if the farms had been inspected in recent years as they should have been. Adequate resources could also allow more testing of food before it makes people sick, pay for more investigators to interview patients and provide more technicians to process lab results more quickly.

3. More resources should be dedicated to investigating the source of foodborne illness outbreaks as quickly as possible.

Tracing a source can inherently take weeks because of incubation periods, the time to process lab results for people who seek medical care and the fact that some people who get sick don’t go to a doctor or remember what they ate.

Here’s the cyclospora/iceberg lettuce timeline:

June 14: The first recorded illnesses in this summer’s most notorious outbreak occurred.
July 7: Taco Bell stopped serving iceberg lettuce by this date.
July 16: More than a week after Taco Bell stopped serving iceberg lettuce and a month after the first illness, the FDA and CDC publicly linked the Taylor Farm lettuce to products served at Taco Bell.
July 17: Taylor Farms initiated a recall of its iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico.
July 18: Marketside brand lettuce from Walmart was recalled. In all, Taylor Farms recalled 35 products from different retailers and operations.
Aug. 15: New cases continued for at least nine weeks; this is the last known date of new illnesses. The first illnesses occurred June 14.

Regulators investigated 28 foodborne illness outbreaks in 2025. Of those 28 investigations, 13 didn’t even identify a food type, such as cucumbers or eggs, at the time of our Food for Thought report in February 2026. In four other cases where a food type was identified, a brand wasn’t. So recalls were announced for only 11 of the 28 outbreaks in 2025.

Some of those contaminated products could have remained for sale, or other products from the same company could also have been contaminated, still making people sick. In addition, this could have exposed more people to danger from food or machinery that is contaminated with foodborne pathogens, since no one discovered the ultimate source of these illnesses.

4. Regulators should track and monitor companies and factories that were previously contaminated with foodborne bacteria.

For example, the Fresh & Ready Foods’ Listeria outbreak in 2025, which was connected to 10 hospitalizations and one death, was linked to a facility that had previously tested positive for Listeria in 2017, as noted in the FDA’s warning letter.

The first case in that Listeria outbreak occurred on Dec. 3, 2023, yet the ready-to-eat products were not recalled until May 10, 2025. The recall stemmed from an FDA inspection that found Listeria contamination. According to the FDA warning letter, “the inspection was initiated as part of a multistate foodborne outbreak investigation.”

If there were frequent re-inspections of facilities with a history of bacteria contamination, perhaps this problem could have been traced to Fresh & Ready sooner, instead of regulators waiting until another outbreak. And maybe sicknesses or the death could have been prevented.

5. Food manufacturers and distributors should do more testing.

This is particularly important for products that are frequent sources of contamination such as fresh produce and soft cheeses. And regulators should do more to hold companies accountable when inadequate testing leads to massive outbreaks.

6. The United States needs better coordination among regulators to keep people safe from foodborne illness.

A GAO report in January 2025 said: “We have long reported that the fragmented nature of the federal food safety oversight system causes inconsistent oversight, ineffective coordination and inefficient use of resources.

“Since 2007, we have identified federal oversight of food safety as a high-risk issue and made several recommendations and matters for congressional consideration.

“In 2017, we called for the Executive Office of the President to develop and implement a national strategy for overseeing food safety. As of January 2025, there were no plans to create a national strategy, according to officials from the Office of Management and Budget.”

7. Manufacturers need to do a better job disclosing allergens in their products, as is required by law.

This should be easy. Products with undeclared allergens such as milk, peanuts or wheat comprised 39% all recalls in 2025. Allergies to one or more foods affect 8% of children and nearly 11% of adults nationwide.

Back to the original question: Are we seeing more food recalls in 2026 and does that mean our food is less safe? It’s too soon to tell. But even if we had a total number of recalls for all of 2026 and the number was higher, it might not indicate more contaminated products. It could mean more enforcement or more company testing of the same universe of bad products. We don’t know.

And remember, one recall could encompass dozens of products, as with the Taylor Farms lettuce recall that affected 35 different products under various brands. So assessing the safety of our food based on the number of recalls has limits. 

The other reason the number of recalls publicized by the FDA doesn’t mean much: The FDA, which oversees about 80% of our food supply, issues news releases for only a fraction of recalls in a given year. Besides the recalls announced on its main website, the FDA has a lesser-known database for food recalls that is difficult to navigate. Recalls listed there aren’t widely publicized. There isn’t a lot of rhyme or reason about which recalls are highlighted in news releases.