So let's see, in the past few years we've had the Boar's head listeria recalls, Taylor farms lettuce contamination, the McDonalds e.coli recalls in 14 states, now chicken wings...
Defunding the FDA and forcing out 4500 staff via DOGE cuts caused this. Right now we have 400 safety inspectors covering 36,000 facilities vs the FDA's own estimates they need at least 1,500 inspectors.
Don't worry! They're going to relax the rules on small scale meat processing allowing it to occur at facilities that rarely if ever see an inspector, surely this will make everything better. You can be certain the people of America will be healthier than ever after this amazing initiative.
The guy in charge of all of this has eaten road kill and rotting carcasses and he appears to be completely fine. I'm sure there will not be any issues.
It's wild how in America at least, the people have to relearn the same lessons every generation or two. It turns out, some regulations are actually beneficial to a society. Maybe don't take a chainsaw to the groups who implement and look after these regulations.
That's true. They are uniquely proud of their ignorance though. It is, as they say, the best -- the greatest. No one does it better. I mean, did you know that dumb was spelled with a -b at the end?
This is true, although it’s true for most if not all developed societies. People read less and less. We live in a post-literate, hyper-visual era. I am not sure if short form video is effective at educating people on why we have public health and food inspection agencies, but I confess I’m not optimistic.
I’m not sure what’s worse, you expecting people to believe nonsense (“thing that happened in 2024 was caused by DOGE!”) or that people (or just bots I guess) are agreeing with you.
Funny. Two of OP’s events are prior to the DOGE cuts so they could not be causative.
But these panics are so amusing. Pete’s breaking the trains. Hegseth (was it him?) is crashing the planes. RFK’s eating the infected meat. The Haitians are eating the cats and dogs. We need a prediction market for the next panic.
And industry is wholesale enjoying the gross drop in QA. I feel like at this point lawsuits need to happen to provide an alternative counter to the urge to drop costs in QA.
These businesses earnestly do not care until it affects their bottom line
I don't really know if this is the cause. But the whole DOGE thing sounded highly irresponsible. Did they understand what they were cutting. Furthermore, there may be even worst consequences in the more distant future.
One might be tempted to wave the numbers away as "Obviously there are fewer recalls, because they don't do inspections to begin with!"
That might be true. It's hard to prove or disprove, though. Perhaps if we look at the statistics on the other end, the actual hospitalizations from tainted food?
> “The number of recalls does not necessarily correlate with the level of surveillance,” said Robert Custard, an environmental health expert who also represents the West Virginia Association of Sanitarians. “Some years you're going to have more than others because of the luck of the draw. This year you may have less total recalls, but the cyclospora outbreak that we had this summer may have the highest number of human cases for any foodborne outbreak in recent history.”
Custard, who worked at the Virginia Department of Health for more than two decades, said cuts to public health staffing and funding can mean fewer people are available to inspect and test possible food-safety problems before they cause illness.
"When you do less testing, you're going to find less problems," Custard said. "When you find less problems, you end up with fewer recalls."
Reasonable take, source provided, yet downvoted. I have a boatload of issues with Trump admin, but the stats here are hard to dispute. I guess it's just making news more now.
No it’s an asinine take when you stop and think. People were fired, agencies were thrown in disarray, there’s constant reports of them fudging numbers or just straight up not doing the work to collect the actual numbers, and you want to try and pretend this is reasonable?
This is conjecture. Right now the stats simply don't reflect it. If there's evidence of corner cutting leading to rising reports of recalls or foodborne illness outbreaks, I'll certainly reconsider.
> “The status quo was, the federal government is going to collect and disseminate data and statistics,” said John Kubale, a University of Michigan professor who helps direct the world’s largest archive of social science research data, including sensitive U.S. federal government data. “That is no longer a reasonable assumption.”
The other issue is that looking into both standard and "Major" recalls by the FDA this year isn't statistically different from any other. In fact there's no overall trend going back years, it mostly seems to be media coverage and the (understandable) rage and frustration with the current admin. It's still a shame to see so many people on HN thoughtlessly repeat a media narrative without considering the stats though.
Firing USDA inspectors etc. is definitely directionally stupid. But yeah, this issue is preexisting. A huge portion of USGov’s rules and regulations were written in response to the social push when stuff like The Jungle was hitting the public perception—which is to say, when public health could be meaningfully improved by a simple non-magnified visual inspection of meat destined for sale. And so that’s what we get: a visual inspection of meat destined for sale.
Say what you will about the overall regulatory environment of Canada and the EU—you can buy meat there and know that you will not get salmonella, because it’s been tested for salmonella, and it won’t be sold for consumption if that test is positive. Stateside we’re just told: well, cook it properly or it’s on you.
If that's true, the opposition should make them pay a political price for it. That's how a competitive political system should work.
Yet almost always I hear nothing or almost nothing from the Democrats, not about Taylor Farms either. It's been that way for many years; I can't understand it.
If someone doesn't pay a political price for bad performance, they will keep doing it.
Every day something happens that would have been on the daily news for weeks under Obama, but nobody cares because it's Trump. Part of it is media bias, where the right doesn't talk about this stuff because it makes them look bad, and the left doesn't talk about it because they are afraid of being called biased, but I also think it's just too damn much.
Everything about this administration is so unhinged, from DOGE to Lake Ontario to Iran to Greenland to taxes to shooting people in the streets to literally every god damned thing that we have absolutely no framework for even conceptualizing what the hell is happening.
Also, half the country lives in a bubble where Trump is anointed by god and saving the country from trans vegan child rapists.
The FDA has been failing to complete inspections on multiple types of facilities (drug and food) for a long time, since at least 2018, and it seems to have deep issues with its staff, culture, and/or management:
When I saw the EST. 18004 in the article I thought the inspection stamps were bad ai attempts, but after some research I found out the EST here is not supposed to be a year, but the id of the establishment being inspected. You can look up the number or the company and see no entries here https://www.fsis.usda.gov/inspection/fsis-inspected-establis...
The FDA was already in bad shape as far as inspections go. In 'The Secret Life of Groceries' (published in 2020) I believe the statistic was that the people responsible for keeping our food system safe only have the capacity to inspect around 5% of domestic agricultural and food processing operations nation-wide. That speaks more to the amount and size of agri-business in the United States than the FDA's capacity, but it also doesn't mean great things for the federal government's ability to preemptively intervene in most cases.
DOGE cuts to FDA, HHS, FSIC, FTC, EPA, and more have inevitably made this problem much worse.
Why do they keep letting Tyson's frozen garbage through? The processed chicken "honey tenders" are great but most of the supposedly less processed frozen chicken I have bought from them recently has been nasty.
I’ve purchased entire packs of “boneless skinless thigh” from Tyson which after opening had all the bones and all the skin. I cannot for a minute understand how that passed inspection.
In any case organics seem to be both less brined (aka not paying for salt water) and well prepared, everytime.
There's also currently a recall of 30,000 pounds of Argentina beef at the same time Trump announced they would be increasing the allowed imports of Argentina beef and are relaxing beef import regulations so that they can undercut American ranchers.
Food is getting so bad, you should just paste the article:
The reason echoes a recent issue the USDA has been following—one that's becoming peculiarly common.
If you’re wondering what has been going on with our food, you’re one of millions. Now, on Wednesday, August 26, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a recall notice on 24,900 pounds of chicken.
The event reportedly impacts foodservice businesses in New England—namely, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) says two separate frozen, not-ready-to-eat Buffalo chicken-flavored products from Boston-based Shanghai Ravioli Corporation, Inc. are being pulled.
Why is the recall happening?
FSIS surveillance reportedly found that products named as “Buffalo chicken rangoon” and “Benedetto’s Buffalo chicken mozzarella sticks.” The products apparently have “false marks of inspection” with “EST. 18004.”
The cited reason suggests the matter may follow a recent trend, in which the USDA is suddenly clamping down on imported foods. An industry trade site refers to Shanghai Ravioli Corporation as a “distributor of pasta and other goods,” which means they could be involved in importing.
The FSIS’s image of the products does not show a country of origin.
Sources have explained that animal-sourced foods brought in from foreign countries need to be inspected once they reach the U.S. side. Other recent USDA recalls for the same reason affected soup and bacon, both from Canada.
What’s the risk?
Wednesday’s FSIS announcement states, “Food produced without inspection may contain undeclared allergens, harmful bacteria, or other contaminants that put consumer health and safety at risk.”
The FSIS lists the recall as a Class I, which they deem as a high or medium risk. This ranking is used when “there is a reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death.”
The agency says it urges businesses not to serve the product and to discard or return them to the place of purchase.
It's a good thing Elon cut out all those useless bureaucrats and boosted the economy! The dow is doing great! People should learn to eat the dow instead of chicken.
The scale of modern industrial food is really hard to comprehend. in the US the per-capita lbs for chicken in 104 annually. That's 36 _billion_ lbs annually.
This is important, I'm glad some one caught it... it's also kind of a nothing burger
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was woke nonsense that’s being rightfully combated by common sense now.
Anyone complaining about all the food safety issues popping up actually hates capitalism and shouldn’t be allowed to participate in government. This is just capitalism at work and the market will sort out who is or is not willing to pay less for chronic diarrhea vs those willing to pay a premium for clean food.
Don’t take away the people’s choice in how much diarrhea they want.
Defunding the FDA and forcing out 4500 staff via DOGE cuts caused this. Right now we have 400 safety inspectors covering 36,000 facilities vs the FDA's own estimates they need at least 1,500 inspectors.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/health/food-safety-trump-...
https://news.google.com/search?q=usa+meat+processing
Naturally. Only the strong survive!
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2207547-fast-food-nati...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Food_Nation
There are more than you listed as well, like the raspberries https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-illness/outbrea...
HN is so worthless now.
This is great news because it means time travel is possible.
But these panics are so amusing. Pete’s breaking the trains. Hegseth (was it him?) is crashing the planes. RFK’s eating the infected meat. The Haitians are eating the cats and dogs. We need a prediction market for the next panic.
These businesses earnestly do not care until it affects their bottom line
Are you really trying to spin your own narrative here, using cherry-picked data and your own link as "evidence"?
The Boar's Head *and* McDonalds outbreaks were in 2024 under the previous admin, way before DOGE, completely undermining this sneed.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2026/08/28/food-r...
One might be tempted to wave the numbers away as "Obviously there are fewer recalls, because they don't do inspections to begin with!"
That might be true. It's hard to prove or disprove, though. Perhaps if we look at the statistics on the other end, the actual hospitalizations from tainted food?
> “The number of recalls does not necessarily correlate with the level of surveillance,” said Robert Custard, an environmental health expert who also represents the West Virginia Association of Sanitarians. “Some years you're going to have more than others because of the luck of the draw. This year you may have less total recalls, but the cyclospora outbreak that we had this summer may have the highest number of human cases for any foodborne outbreak in recent history.”
Custard, who worked at the Virginia Department of Health for more than two decades, said cuts to public health staffing and funding can mean fewer people are available to inspect and test possible food-safety problems before they cause illness.
"When you do less testing, you're going to find less problems," Custard said. "When you find less problems, you end up with fewer recalls."
https://www.notus.org/trump-white-house/federal-data-is-disa...
> “The status quo was, the federal government is going to collect and disseminate data and statistics,” said John Kubale, a University of Michigan professor who helps direct the world’s largest archive of social science research data, including sensitive U.S. federal government data. “That is no longer a reasonable assumption.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boars-head-listeria-recall-bug-...
https://www.fsis.usda.gov/recalls-alerts/boars-head-provisio...
Let's not let facts and real data get in the way though. Every post is being massively downvoted.
Say what you will about the overall regulatory environment of Canada and the EU—you can buy meat there and know that you will not get salmonella, because it’s been tested for salmonella, and it won’t be sold for consumption if that test is positive. Stateside we’re just told: well, cook it properly or it’s on you.
Where can I locate this Salmonella-immune Bizarro Canada and Bizarro EU on a map?
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2026/04/ongoing-salmonella-ou...
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/article/90-confirmed-salmonell...
https://www.foodpoisoningnews.com/salmonella-outbreak-in-can...
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2026/08/polish-eggs-linked-to...
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2025/10/salmonella-sickens-50...
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2026/04/one-dead-in-german-sa...
Yet almost always I hear nothing or almost nothing from the Democrats, not about Taylor Farms either. It's been that way for many years; I can't understand it.
If someone doesn't pay a political price for bad performance, they will keep doing it.
Everything about this administration is so unhinged, from DOGE to Lake Ontario to Iran to Greenland to taxes to shooting people in the streets to literally every god damned thing that we have absolutely no framework for even conceptualizing what the hell is happening.
Also, half the country lives in a bubble where Trump is anointed by god and saving the country from trans vegan child rapists.
https://investigatemidwest.org/2025/01/14/as-foodborne-illne...
https://medshadow.org/investigating-generics/fda-fails-in-la...
How many people will consume this, how many people will get sick?
How many more product will be dangerous. Are we waiting for more death to just have bare minimum safety measures?
That's a wild combination of words there.
DOGE cuts to FDA, HHS, FSIC, FTC, EPA, and more have inevitably made this problem much worse.
In any case organics seem to be both less brined (aka not paying for salt water) and well prepared, everytime.
The reason echoes a recent issue the USDA has been following—one that's becoming peculiarly common.
If you’re wondering what has been going on with our food, you’re one of millions. Now, on Wednesday, August 26, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a recall notice on 24,900 pounds of chicken.
The event reportedly impacts foodservice businesses in New England—namely, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) says two separate frozen, not-ready-to-eat Buffalo chicken-flavored products from Boston-based Shanghai Ravioli Corporation, Inc. are being pulled. Why is the recall happening?
FSIS surveillance reportedly found that products named as “Buffalo chicken rangoon” and “Benedetto’s Buffalo chicken mozzarella sticks.” The products apparently have “false marks of inspection” with “EST. 18004.”
The cited reason suggests the matter may follow a recent trend, in which the USDA is suddenly clamping down on imported foods. An industry trade site refers to Shanghai Ravioli Corporation as a “distributor of pasta and other goods,” which means they could be involved in importing.
The FSIS’s image of the products does not show a country of origin.
Sources have explained that animal-sourced foods brought in from foreign countries need to be inspected once they reach the U.S. side. Other recent USDA recalls for the same reason affected soup and bacon, both from Canada. What’s the risk?
Wednesday’s FSIS announcement states, “Food produced without inspection may contain undeclared allergens, harmful bacteria, or other contaminants that put consumer health and safety at risk.”
The FSIS lists the recall as a Class I, which they deem as a high or medium risk. This ranking is used when “there is a reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death.”
The agency says it urges businesses not to serve the product and to discard or return them to the place of purchase.
lol
This is important, I'm glad some one caught it... it's also kind of a nothing burger
Anyone complaining about all the food safety issues popping up actually hates capitalism and shouldn’t be allowed to participate in government. This is just capitalism at work and the market will sort out who is or is not willing to pay less for chronic diarrhea vs those willing to pay a premium for clean food.
Don’t take away the people’s choice in how much diarrhea they want.
Instead government is focused on banning name on vegan burgers and other stupid things.