It’s not your imagination. Food recalls have been coming out more frequently lately. But it may not be that the situation has become worse. It may be that technology has improved. And officials have become more cautious…
If you’re tuned-in to the foodsphere, you’ll have noted the marked increase in recall notices over the past few months. Take a deep breath. It may not really be a cause for amplified concern.
The issue, in brief…
In spite of appearances to the contrary, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirms the actual in-cidence of food borne illnesses in the US has declined since 2009.
So, what’s going on? The answer may be deceptively simple.
Less is more
But not in the usual way.
In brief, more recalls are being flagged these days. But fewer contaminated products are getting into general distribution before the warnings are raised.
Good reasons
There are several good reasons for this turn of events. And not all are immediately apparent to the casual observer.
For one, the technology used to detect contamination in food products is continually getting better. But nobody talks about that. The testers just upgrade and press on, finding more incidents that meet the official contamination criteria than they did before. And issuing more warnings.
Shoot first…
Ask questions later. Food safety expert Darin Detwiler, a professor at Northeastern University, told Newsweek: “The purpose of a recall is to proactively remove potentially harmful products from the market to prevent such incidents.” As a result, he says recalls are often precautionary. Not all actually lead to documented cases of illness. And that’s considered an optimal outcome.
Lowered bars
Another reason seems to be associated with the inevitable human factor. As recall notices proliferate, folks responsible for food safety may be lowering their perceptive bars.
Better, they may reason, to err on the side of caution rather than take a chance…
Among the public, folks may – consciously or unconsciously – be lowering their threshold to the risk of food borne illness. As a result, they may be more aware of what ‘food poisoning’ is and how it can affect them.
Consumers are bombarded with lists of symptoms every time a recall warning comes out. Sometimes, the media carries those details. Sometimes, not. It’s up to them. But they usually do. It’s considered a substantive part of the overall ‘story’. And sometimes they’re included just to pad the story. Like when your editor has left you a 10-inch hole to fill on A3…
When ordinary folks hear they, “may experience, […] nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, or fever,” it’s only natural to expect them to react cautiously. Sometimes, they even panic. As when the list of possible results associated with a given recall includes hospitalization, permanent injury or even death.
The more warnings, the greater the bombardment, and the higher the awareness of risk.
My take
There’s probably a lot less reason for concern over food borne illness now than there was, say, be-fore the COVID crisis. But for reasons well expressed by the experts, we are hammering ourselves more about the issue.
And that’s a shame. Worry associated with food-based issues is something we could all do with less of in our lives right now…
~ Maggie J.