Is FDA Recall Process Too Slow To Protect Consumers? Victims Blame FDA.
[Posted on: Thursday, July 5, 2018]

FDA is responsible to monitor and warn consumers about food borne infections to prevent illnesses, but it could take weeks and even months between when FDA becomes aware of a contaminated food and when the recall process begins. And during that time unsuspecting consumers could keep buying the tainted food and get sick. In an investigation reported this week, many consumers got fatally sick by eating E coli contaminated I.M. Healthy Original Creamy SoyNut Butter. It took FDA about 2 months to initiate a recall after the first reported infection, and another 3 weeks before the manufacturing facility was closed, and the tainted food could be bought almost 5 months from the first report. Rightfully the victims blamed FDA for not doing its job. On top of it, most food recalls are initiated voluntarily by the manufacturers and the information about the list of stores where the tainted food product may be available is generally not available to consumers easily. All this paint a dire picture showing the inadequacy of the recall process. However, the process has improved greatly since the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011 which gave FDA sweeping powers to manage food. It takes weeks and months now, compared to several months it used to take earlier, not that it is any solace to the victims of food borne illnesses. CDC estimates that each year roughly 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) gets sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne diseases. However, food borne infections are not always only due to defects in the manufacturing process. They could happen due to mishandling of the food by the consumers, unhygienic practices by consumers, and other reasons. Also rarely food borne infections are spread across the entire supply chain. They could be limited to individual batches available at specific outlets and not all the food manufactured. A more aggressive recall process could create bigger disruption to food supply and could cause even more anguish to consumers. Of the numerous food borne illnesses very few are due to manufacturing defects. Indeed, the FDA directed recall of food products is rare; FDA has directed companies to recall tainted food only a few times since 2011. There are no publicly available numbers for the voluntary recalls by manufacturers, so it brings back the question, should FDA be more aggressive in recalling tainted food. While the knee-jerk response would be yes, the more balanced answer should be may be with a lot of conditions. Data shows that while food borne illnesses are common, they are rarely linked to a specific manufacturer. So, we need better surveillance of the supply chain to identify the specific sources of the food borne illnesses as that may lead to targeted enforcement. If FDA were to start recalling every food item for any report of illness, we may be left with nothing in any grocery store, and that would be a bigger problem.