Iceberg lettuce. Jalapeños. Alfalfa sprouts. Eggs. Frozen berries.
For the past several months, these common grocery foods have all landed on food recall lists.
Americans are seeing some alarming food-safety issues that include the nation’s largest recorded cyclospora outbreak due to contaminated iceberg lettuce, hundreds of salmonella illnesses linked to recalled jalapeños, and dozens more tied to contaminated alfalfa sprouts.
Thousands of people were sickened by foodborne illnesses this summer.
The alerts have piled up, with cyclospora occupying much of the attention this year, as the parasitic infection gave explosive diarrhea to people in 48 states.
But are food recalls actually becoming more common?
It might feel that way, but statistically speaking,
not really.
The number of food recalls classified by the Food and Drug Administration through August this year is running below historical levels.
As of Aug. 18, the FDA classified 860 food reports this year, about 15% below the average for the same period over the previous five years and about 29% below the 10-year average.
The number of food recalls classified by the FDA has fluctuated sharply over the past decade. Classified recalls peaked at more than 3,100 in 2016, fell to about 1,200 in 2020 before rising to more than 2,100 in 2023. In 2025, the FDA classified 1,566 recalls, compared with 1,479 in 2024.
On average, the FDA has classified 126 food recalls per month during the current Trump administration so far, vs. 135 during the Biden administration and 164 during the first Trump administration, according to a USA TODAY analysis of the FDA enforcement reports.
The changes at the Department of Health and Human Services under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have made experts watchful for outbreaks, as the agency cut its workforce and reduced surveillance to just two pathogens. The cuts have impacted the FoodNet program, which has monitored foodborne illnesses since 1995.
A decline in food recalls does not mean the nation’s food supply is getting safer, experts say.
“The number of recalls does not necessarily correlate with the level of surveillance,” said Robert Custard, an environmental health expert who also represents the West Virginia Association of Sanitarians. “Some years you're going to have more than others because of the luck of the draw. This year you may have less total recalls, but the cyclospora outbreak that we had this summer may have the highest number of human cases for any foodborne outbreak in recent history.”
Custard, who worked at the Virginia Department of Health for more than two decades, said cuts to public health staffing and funding can mean fewer people are available to inspect and test possible food-safety problems before they cause illness.
"When you do less testing, you're going to find less problems," Custard said. "When you find less problems, you end up with fewer recalls."
The cyclospora outbreak has spread to 48 states plus the District of Columbia, with more than 17,000 lab-confirmed cases, 450 hospitalizations, and two deaths since May.
This cyclospora outbreak is ranked as the third-largest outbreak in U.S. history by the number of people sickened, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. The largest was a 1994 salmonella outbreak linked to ice cream that sickened about 224,000 people nationwide, followed by a 1985 salmonella outbreak linked to milk that sickened 168,000 to 197,000 people.
Sandra Eskin, CEO at Stop Foodborne Illness, a nonprofit organization advocating the prevention of illness and death from foodborne pathogens, said the number of food recalls matters less than the number of people who are getting sick.
“To me, the public health question is if the recall is accompanying an outbreak and how many people are getting sick,” Eskin said.
Almost all the food recalls, about 99%, were initiated voluntarily by companies that make the products. Only 1% of the recalls were ordered by the FDA.
After a company initiates a recall, the FDA evaluates the situation and assigns a recall classification based on the level of health hazard posed by the product.
The agency took an average of 38 days to classify food recall reports during the current Trump administration. That number was about 49 days under Biden and 53 days during Trump’s first administration.
Every food recall is different
The most serious category of recall, Class I, is determined when there is a reasonable chance that eating or using a product could cause serious illness or death. They accounted for about 44% of all recalls since 2012. Class II recalls, the less serious ones, accounted for about 50%.
“Not all recalls are equal,” said Eskin, who previously worked at the U.S. Department of Agriculture overseeing food safety regulations and policy.
Some recalls, Eskin said, are made after companies’ routine testing catches a pathogen before anyone gets sick, while others involve outbreaks that are already underway and vary widely in size and severity.
In the case of the cyclospora outbreak, Taylor Farms initiated a recall of iceberg lettuce after reports of sickness emerged from across the country. The company initiated a recall on July 17, but the FDA is yet to classify it.
Eskin described those illness numbers from the cyclospora outbreak as "jaw-dropping."
Other major food recalls this year touched nearly every aisle of the grocery stores, including Publix’s frozen berries, more than 1.6 million eggs, and nearly 30,000 raw beef products.
Some of the recalls were also tied to foodborne illnesses reported across the country. A salmonella outbreak linked to jalapeños has sickened 431 people in 32 states and 57 were hospitalized. An alfalfa sprout outbreak has sickened 55 people across 15 states with E. coli and salmonella, with four hospitalizations so far.
For Eric Hageman, an attorney with 31 years of experience and 18 years specializing in foodborne illness cases, this summer has been unusually busy.
His team, Hageman said, has received at least five times as many inquiries this summer as in previous years from people seeking legal help after becoming sick from contaminated food.
“There's absolutely been a very significant increase in the number of people that have been reaching out to us for legal help with foodborne illness cases,” said Hageman, whose clients were affected by a range of foodborne illnesses, including salmonella, listeria, cyclospora and E. coli.
Hageman said that many of his clients didn't realize what made them sick until a recall was announced.
"Eating our food should not be a high-risk activity," Hageman said. "But for many people, it turns out that way."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Are food recalls increasing under RFK? What the data reveals.
