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Food recalls: FAQ with food safety experts

The seemingly constant notice of product recalls may cause consumers to think about how they can help prevent them, or what they can do should they discover they had purchased a product that was the subject of a recall.
Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Romaine lettuce is displayed on a shelf at a supermarket on April 23, 2018 in San Rafael, California.

The seemingly constant notice of product recalls may cause consumers to think about how they can help prevent them, or what they can do should they discover they had purchased a product that was the subject of a recall.

John Matthews III, President of Food Safety Resource, Dr. Xiang (Crystal) Yang, Meat Specialist at the University California, Davis, Dr. Erin DiCaprio, Assistant Cooperative Extension Specialist in Community Food Safety at UC Davis, and Dr. Trevor Suslow, a Food Safety Professor at UC Davis. Sat down with ABC10 to answer questions to help consumers understand how food safety works and what they can do in the event of a recall.

Is there anything that a consumer can look for when looking at meats and produce?

When at the store, Matthews said that there is not much that consumers can do to preemptively tell that food is safe. He said that shoppers can ask the retailer if they know about any of the food safety protocols that their produce provider follows.

Generally, Matthews said that he believes most food producers, processors and distributors think that food safety is a basic human right. He also said he believes food producers and processors try their best to keep food safe for the consumer.

What typically gets recalled?

Both Matthews and Suslow agree that one of the easiest produce items to be contaminated, aside from raw meat and soft cheeses, is leafy greens, like lettuce, spinach, basil, cilantro, etc.

Suslow said that this was primarily because of the way that leafy greens are often distributed.

A list of other high-risk foods can be found at foodsafety.gov.

Matthews and Suslow also said that quite a few recalls occur because a product was mislabeled, such as when a product does not say that an allergen was included in the process of creating said product.

Suslow said that this type of recall occurs more often than because of contamination.

How and why do recalls happen at such a large scale?

Suslow said that contamination spreads easily because of what’s involved in growing and processing crops.

Water can be an easy transmitter of a contaminant, Suslow said. If the water is contaminated, it can spread easily through a field of crops.

Later, when a contaminated crop is taken to a packaging plant, Suslow said it can encounter other clean produce and contaminate them. Then, when it is finally packaged, the contaminated produce could be put in packaging with other items that are then possibly contaminated as well.

Yang said that many ground meat recalls are caused due to the number of animals that a processed. Even if only one animal was contaminated, a whole batch could become tainted.

What should I do if I bought or ate recalled food?

Just throw it out. That’s what Suslow said he told his daughter when she was unsure if her lettuce was part of a previous recall.

DiCaprio said, if your food was part of a recall, to make sure to you dispose of it in a way that animals or other humans won’t consume it.

DiCaprio and Suslow said that consumers can also try to return the food to the store for a refund.

Suslow said that typically only a small percentage of a product being recalled is actually contaminated. So, if you have eaten recalled food and feel no symptoms, he said you should be fine. But you should still toss out the rest of the product just to be safe.

Some common symptoms of foodborne illnesses include diarrhea and/or vomiting, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

DiCaprio suggests that if someone has consumed recalled food and feels symptoms they should make sure to contact the local health department and go see a doctor.

What happens to the food that has been recalled?

Suslow said that food that has been recalled usually is pulled from the shelves and thrown away.

He said that stores typically go through a process of pushing the information of the recall through loyalty member notices and the media. Sometimes stores will offer refunds or other incentives when informing customers, Suslow said.

After the contaminated product is recalled, the company, and government agencies, will work to find the source of the contamination and remedy the issue.

Yang said that meats typically are destroyed after a recall. If the recall was caused by mislabeling, Yang said the product is usually re-labled and put back on the market.

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