According to a new study from Trace One, a company specializing in regulatory compliance for the food and beverage industry, looking at the U.S. states most impacted by food recalls over the last five years.
Food recalls frequently generate headlines and public concern because of their associated safety risks and health hazards. To help protect consumers, government officials have developed a system of regulation and oversight—a shared responsibility of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture—to identify hazardous products and issue recalls to minimize those risks to consumers.
Both the USDA and the FDA distinguish between Class I, Class II, and Class III food recalls to signify the level of risk associated with each. Class I recalls are for the most hazardous products, which have higher risks of causing serious adverse health consequences or death, while Class II recalls have more moderate risks and Class III recalls have minimal risks.
Recalls are a nationwide concern, but some states are more vulnerable than others. To calculate which states have been most impacted by food recalls in recent years, researchers combined data on recall events from both the USDA and the FDA for the years 2020–2024, then ranked states accordingly.
These are the main takeaways from the report, highlighting some key stats for New York State:
- From 2020 to 2023, the total number of food recalls issued by the USDA and the FDA grew from 454 to 547—an increase of more than 20%.
- This growth took place across all classes of recall, but notably the number of Class I recalls has increased in each year since 2020. And through the first half of 2024, the number of total recalls is set to roughly match 2023’s total.
- The leading causes of food recalls are allergen contamination (responsible for nearly 40% of all cases), bacterial contamination (21.1%), and foreign object contamination (11.6%). The least common but highly concerning are lead contamination recalls, comprising 1.7% of the total.
- Since 2020, 8.1% of the country’s food recalls have originated from New York State producers.
- During that same span, New York State residents have been impacted by 35.3% of Class I recalls, and 36.4% of all food recalls—the 2nd most of any U.S. state.