Food Recalls Increased By Over 5000% In The Last Year—Here’s Why
Some things go without saying. For example, when buying food from the grocery store, whatever you purchase should be safe to consume. An expiration date can slip through the cracks here, and on rare occasions, a listeria outbreak can go undetected there. But for the most part, you don’t expect your groceries to make you sick. That’s why the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture exist.
So, it might surprise you to learn that, between April and September 2025, the FDA reported a 75.8% increase in food recalls, according to data from Sedgwick Brand Protection, while the USDA reported a 5,511.8% increase in pounds of food product recalls.
Some of the recalls include Gerber biscuits containing pieces of plastic, 4.9 Million pounds of frozen boneless Hormel chicken containing pieces of metal, and ByHeart infant formula contaminated with botulism, which landed three dozen babies in the hospital. And those don’t even scratch the surface of last year’s recall total—a trend that has carried over into 2026.
The sudden surge comes on the heels of the Trump administration cutting thousands of jobs at the FDA, per CBS News. In March 2025, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced plans to cut over 3,500 jobs from the FDA, in a statement saying, “Over time, bureaucracies like HHS become wasteful and inefficient even when most of their staff are dedicated and competent civil servants.”
Almost immediately after the layoffs, FDA staff began reporting challenges with meeting product review deadlines. Robert Califf, the former U.S. Commissioner of Food and Drugs, responded to the layoffs in a LinkedIn post, saying, “The FDA as we’ve known it is finished, with most of the leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety no longer employed.”
Less than two months later, Politico reported that more than 15,000 USDA employees, or 15% of the department’s overall staff, accepted the Trump Administration’s offer to resign. The offer was given as part of a reorganization plan to make the USDA more effective and efficient. The USDA spokesperson, Seth Christensen, said in a statement, “President Biden and Secretary Vilsack left the USDA in complete disarray, including hiring thousands of employees with no sustainable way to pay them.” By the end of the first half of 2025, the number of USDA employee cuts had exceeded 20,000.
With the number of recalls at jaw-dropping highs following a staggering number of layoffs, the effectiveness of the Trump Administration’s reorganization plan is debatable at best. Interestingly, in an interview with CBS News, Dr. Nikki Tavasoli, a former FDA economist, alleged that an increase in recalls doesn’t necessarily indicate a less safe food supply, but rather a confirmation that the system is working.
In the same breath, however, she says that, “Instead of preventing problems early, we’re catching them more after the fact. The concern, though, is that with fewer inspectors, some problems just won’t be found as quickly, particularly before the foods hit the shelves.”
If it’s the FDA and the USDA’s job to prevent recalls, how does an increase in them indicate a working system? You could say that the system is “working,” but is it really working?
