When the coronavirus pandemic hit last year, the nation's food supply wasn't spared from the fallout. Restaurants closed, manufacturers raced to implement new protective measures and grocery stores struggled to keep their shelves stocked.
A shift also occurred in the food safety system, the safeguard between American consumers and what they eat.
At the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service, agency data shows that regulators reported only about a quarter as many recalls in 2020 as it did the previous year, and in 2021 the agency remains well behind its pre-pandemic pace.
At the Food and Drug Administration, the other government agency that issues food recalls, there was a more modest decrease in the number of recalls issued last year compared with 2019, continuing a downward trend over the past several years.
Officials and food safety experts say it's unclear what this all means for consumers. A drop in the number of recalls could signal a system growing safer, but some fear it could mean pandemic disruptions have allowed potential risks to slip through the cracks. Experts have been encouraged by the fact that there has been no discernible spike in the number of cases of foodborne illnesses, and they say that the number of recalls is likely shifting because of COVID-19's far-reaching effects on the economy.
"It's like I tell my graduate students: If you're doing an experiment, you need to change one variable at a time," said Don Schaffner, a professor of food science at Rutgers University. "Here, we've changed a whole lot of variables at once."
How COVID-19 changed the food safety system
In the early days of the pandemic, lockdowns and food shortages reshaped the way Americans ate. Restaurants shuttered before slowly returning to limited service. People spent more money at grocery stores and cooked more meals at home.
The changes introduced a new set of challenges for the USDA, which is responsible for meat, poultry and egg products, and the FDA, which oversees basically all other foods. Seemingly overnight, the two agencies were suddenly part of a whole-of-government response to an unprecedented public health crisis that went far beyond food.
The FDA announced in March 2020 that it was temporarily suspending most foreign inspections of food and other products it regulates. The agency, which also monitors new drugs, was involved in responding to the pandemic and would later be responsible for examining the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.
The USDA, which has inspectors physically present in certain meat and poultry manufacturing facilities, continued inspections as normal but said it was prioritizing inspections in certain areas based on local conditions and resources.
Recalls fell by 75% at the USDA, but less dramatically at the FDA
In 2020, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issued 32 recalls, according to agency data. The year before, it had 126 recalls and, the year before that, 128. So far this year, the service has issued 47 recalls.
An FSIS spokesperson said in a statement that the decline is largely because of fewer incidents being reported to the agency. Both the USDA and the FDA conduct their own inspections but often rely on producers and consumers to flag issues with a given food product before the decision is made to pull it from shelves.
"The reason for this decrease in reported incidents requiring recall analyses was likely due to a number of factors including societal disruptions and consumer behavior during the pandemic," the spokesperson said. "If USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service identifies any meat or poultry products as adulterated or misbranded that are not under control of the firm and available for sale, then the agency requests that the firm recall the product."
At the FDA, the fluctuations appear to be far less drastic.
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