Food safety inspections plunge
Foodborne illness investigations have slowed and food recalls have plummeted to their lowest levels in years because of disruptions in America’s multilayered food safety system caused by the novel coronavirus, a USA TODAY investigation found.
The pandemic struck the system at every level – from the federal agencies tasked with stopping contaminated food before it leaves farms and factories to the state health departments that test sick residents for foodborne illnesses like E. coli.
Experts say there is no evidence yet of resulting widespread health problems, but food safety advocates say Americans are now more at risk.
“We have so many different safeguards built into our system, and one by one COVID is knocking pieces out,” Sarah Sorscher, deputy director of regulatory affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
The Food and Drug Administration announced in March that it would postpone in-person inspections of the nation’s food factories, canneries and poultry farms. As a result, the number of FDA inspections dropped from an average of more than 900 a month to just eight in April. Along with that, FDA citations issued for unsafe conditions tumbled – from hundreds a month to nearly zero in April.
The number of product recalls followed suit.
Companies primarily issue recalls themselves and report them to the FDA. Weekly reports from the FDA shows the number of recalls dropping from 173 in February to 105 in March to 70 in April.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture also oversees food recalls. Their numbers, too, dropped from an average of more than 10 a month to an unprecedented zero in March and just two in April. Between January and April, the USDA listed just seven food recalls – the lowest number for that period in at least a decade.
A USDA spokesperson said by email that the agency is “continuing to meet all inspection obligations” and that it has further pushed the food industry for more “accountability.”
The agency “is proactively engaging with industry to improve production practices and reduce the number of recalls and we are seeing the results of these efforts,” the spokesperson wrote.
Meanwhile, some state health departments are so busy with COVID-19 that they’re struggling to keep up with the typical foodborne illness workload.
State health agencies typically interact with local doctors and hospitals to gather information that’s then loaded into a nationwide PulseNet database administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
PulseNet activity started plummeting in April, said Dr. Robert Tauxe, director of the CDC’s foodborne illness division.