FDA food recalls by hazard

11 reasons food gets recalled, classified from the reason the firm gave on each of the 29,386 FDA enforcement records. Each page states which clause of the preventive controls rule covers that hazard, before it lists anything.

A record can carry more than one hazard, because a reason line that reads “undeclared milk following a sanitation failure” is both and both are true. The counts below therefore sum to more than the number of records that were classified at all.

Roughly one record in seven matches no hazard here. The patterns are tuned to put a record on the right page rather than on as many pages as possible, so a reason line too vague to classify is left unclassified. Those records are still on their food, year, state and firm pages.

Each hazard page names the clause a preventive controls plan would address it under. That is where a plan covers the hazard, not a finding that any firm violated anything: a recall record states a reason, and most of these were voluntary.

• Undeclared allergens7,778An undeclared allergen recall means a food contained one of the major allergens and the label did not say so, either because the wrong label was applied or because an ingredient carried an allergen nobody traced.
• Listeria monocytogenes7,493Listeria monocytogenes is a bacterium that grows at refrigeration temperature, which is why it dominates recalls of ready-to-eat foods that are never cooked again before they are eaten.
• Salmonella3,642Salmonella is a bacterium that survives in low-moisture foods for months, which is why it appears in recalls of products that carry no water for it to grow in: nut butters, spices, flour and dry pet food.
• Foreign material2,432A foreign material recall means something that is not food was found in food: metal, plastic, glass, wood or insect matter, usually shed by equipment during processing.
• Spoilage and mould782A spoilage recall means the food degraded before its date: mould growth, unintended fermentation, swelling or rancidity, usually traced to a seal, a formulation or a storage temperature.
• Chemical contamination607A chemical contamination recall covers a substance that is harmful in food and was never meant to be there: a heavy metal, a cleaning chemical, a pesticide residue, or a natural toxin such as aflatoxin or histamine.
• E. coli551Shiga toxin-producing E.
• Unapproved ingredients536An unapproved ingredient recall means a product contained a substance not permitted in food, most often an undisclosed pharmaceutical active found in a dietary supplement.
• Clostridium botulinum350Clostridium botulinum recalls are recalls of the process, not of a test result: the organism produces its toxin without oxygen, so a low-acid food in a sealed container that missed its scheduled process is recalled whether or not toxin was ever found.
• Process deviation306A process deviation recall means the process ran outside its validated limits: a thermal process that did not reach its time and temperature, a pH that drifted, or a seal that failed.
• Viral and parasitic contamination303Hepatitis A, norovirus and Cyclospora recalls trace back to a person or to water rather than to the process: an infected food handler, or produce irrigated or washed with contaminated water.