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I've seen speculation that US food recalls are up. FDA provides all food recall information on their website, downloadable as an Excel file, dating back to 2017.
So I did a quick analysis by year, and it looks like recalls are indeed way up under Biden / since Covid:
So what changed from 2021-2022? I've seen rumors on Reddit that Trump deregulated inspections, but can't find any mention of this on the FDA website. Has there been a drop in inspections, a drop in factory safety enforcement, or are recalls happening more aggressively?
This counts news about food recalls, not food recalls that are not reported in the news. Actual recalls are not going up.
Huh. I must have ignored that part of the original site. Thank you!
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This is very important to note, as the number of recalls is vastly higher than what's reported here (and doesn't include USDA recalls, which form the bulk).
The actual number of recalls has been fairly consistent over the last decade and actually falling if you remove undeclared allergens and potential rather than actual outbreaks.
The EU is facing an annual increases in food recalls as well likely due to the increase in the sophistication in tracing and proactive removal.
Here's a more detailed and exhaustive study for the last twenty years.
Undeclared allergens and more sophisticated policing of potential contamination will cause an increase in recalls, but this is food becoming more regulated and safe, rather than less (at least in accordance with what the law deems safe).
Oh. Thank you. Your link contains a much better (and more hopeful) figure. It appears this whole post was founded on a misunderstanding.
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The CDC has incidence rates of food borne diseases: https://wwwn.cdc.gov/FoodNetFast/PathogenSurveillance/AnnualSummary (2023 data is only in the preliminary report https://www.cdc.gov/foodnet/reports/index.html)
Data from the same period has no strong correlation with the number of recalls, nor do I see any particular trend other than deaths being about 135 in 2017-2020 and about 170 in 2021-2023 which doesn't correlate with infection or hospitalization rate so I would expect some other factor than a change in contamination rate.
Thank you for this data! Hospitalizations look like a COVID dip, rather than random. I agree with you that deaths suddenly spike in 2021. Infections oddly high only in 2023, but as you said the data is only preliminary. Guess it is worth while keeping an eye on.
I suppose food borne disease is probably dominated more by kitchen errors rather than by food processing contamination issues: stuff like improperly washing hands between meats and vegetables, or cutting watermelon before washing it.
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This is something I've actually been meaning to ask about - I saw somewhat credible comments that this was due to deregulation under Trump, but haven't heard the other side of the story.
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Do you have older data as well? This is just trump + biden data, and it's almost consistent with "Trump deprioritized recalls" as a sole explanation. If it was <100 consistently pre-Trump, that's more interesting.
No, sorry, only data from 2017 onward is currently published at the FDA site link.
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