Leading cause of recalls in 2017 undeclared allergens, mislabeling

Food Industry Counsel LLC says 438 total recalls were reported.

The Food Industry Counsel LLC has just published its review of how many food product recalls were issued by the FDA and USDA last year.

There were 438 recalls in total and the leading cause of these recalls was the presence of undeclared allergens and products being mislabeled. Almost half of the recalls, a total number of 218 products, contained ingredients such as wheat, peanuts, tree nuts, fish and other allergens that were not declared on the product label.

In addition to undeclared ingredients, some misbranded products had the wrong label altogether. For instance, the Food Industry Counsel reported one raw pork product was labeled as ready-to-eat (RTE), when it wasn’t cooked.

The second leading cause of recalls, a total of 147 or 34 percent, was due to the potential presence of harmful pathogens in RTE foods. The number one pathogen discovered in food products was Listeria Monocytogenes, which was the cause of 101 recalls in 2017. Some of these products included hummus, protein bars, nuts, soup and waffles.

To read more of the report, please visit https://www.foodindustrycounsel.com

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Debra Schug was Editor-in-Chief of Food Engineering. She began her media career over a decade ago writing and producing broadcast news for both television and radio at the local and national level. She spent many years as the managing editor for two trade magazines in the oil industry and the research editor for an annual petroleum report. She has a master’s degree in journalism and mass communication from Iowa State University.