Food Safety 2024: A Look Back at an ‘Unusual’ Year

By David Acheson, Founder & CEO, The Acheson Group

At this time of year, The Acheson Group (TAG) traditionally takes a look back at the past year in the food industry and a look forward to the new year, with insights from TAG President and CEO Dr. David Acheson. In this article, Dr. Acheson looks back at 2024; next month we’ll look into his 2025 crystal ball.

2024 in a nutshell: It’s been unusual in the food world. One recall after another, one outbreak after another and commodity/pathogen connections not typically seen. It’s been unusual, and it has a lot of people asking if the food supply is getting less safe.

That’s a question that’s tough to answer. The statistics will tell us whether, numerically, we’re having more recalls or more outbreaks, but there are other factors that come into play. For example, it feels like there have been a lot because they have involved some big names and big events, so there has been a lot of media focus. We typically see this when something big happens, then when something not so big happens in the same general vein, it becomes the thing to talk about and, thus, gets more attention than normal. But does that mean that recalls have actually increased?

When I’ve looked at the numbers, I’ve not seen any massive shift or increase. It might blip up a bit, but that’s typical over the years; it happens. So my personal view is that, although there are always companies that struggle and don’t do things right, the food supply continues to get incrementally safer relative to many other factors that impact the likelihood of an outbreak being detected. Let me explain. Historically, we have evolved our genetic technology, linking an outbreak strain over here with a strain over there. We’re getting better and better at that, so small clusters and outbreaks that might have gone unnoticed in the past are being picked up, noticed, attributed to a food commodity, and reacted to.

So food safety has become higher profile. I think your average consumer is more sensitized to foodborne illness outbreaks, because we’ve had some high profile brands that have been in the news, which always sensitizes people. It’s become a hot topic and that raises the ante on the regulatory side as well as the industry. This is particularly true for 2024 because the regulatory agencies have been bashed around for different reasons, such as USDA on its oversight related to Boar’s Head; FDA on its lack of keeping up on chemical risks and its continuing reorganization; and now, very recently, Canada’s CFIA around Listeria. So when there is a significant outbreak, particularly when a regulatory agency is seen as not being as diligent as they could or should have been, then there is a reaction in the opposite direction, resulting in a lot more diligence, more focus, more testing, and a heck of a lot less tolerance by regulators.

Another very important factor that can directly impact how food is made is the industry’s struggle since COVID with finding and retaining talented individuals who want to work in this industry. We went through a period of lots of temporary workers, which was challenging; and while that is less the case today, there aren’t many people who want to work in, say, refrigeration temperatures for eight hour shifts five days a week. So the food industry has continued to struggle to find good people and maintain them.

Add to that the increasing susceptibility of consumers. As a society, we are aging, and we have more individuals who are immunocompromised due to medical interventions, not just due to age, because modern medical technology is helping people survive situations that they might otherwise not have.

None of this suddenly changed in 2024, but all of these factors play into the perception that something’s changed, that it’s gotten worse. All of these factors create a dynamic situation that we’re all striving to manage. Yet, as a whole, I believe that year over year, our food safety system gets stronger – even though not everybody would agree with me on that.

Which brings us to the impossible-to-overlook elephant in the room: the election and the regulatory movement on making America healthy again. Our president-elect announced that he wants Robert F. Kennedy Jr to head Health and Human Services with a mandate to “fix the food system” and make America healthy again. As of this writing, that is still rhetoric, but there is a lot of speculation as to what it will mean, and we can certainly expect it to track out into the future in some unknown way.

To attempt to be prepared wherever that will take us, I would advise the industry to keep your eyes open; watch what’s going on; and try to be proactive. Take chemicals in food as an example – note what you are seeing in the media: what do other countries not allow that the U.S. does? For example, the UK is pulling some US-made candies from shelves because they have dyes or other chemicals that are banned in the UK as they are considered to be unsafe. This is causing US consumers to ask why something that is considered unsafe in the UK is seen as safe in the US.

To help plan for change, consider where we would be as an industry if FDA starts to regulate chemicals more stringently in a similar way. What would be the impact on your products? I wouldn’t recommend that you take action, because regulations take time, but it’s always smart to try to look around the next corner and begin to think about how you would approach it; what you can or should do.

Start thinking about how you would replace residue X, chemical Y, or dye Z in your products with something that would be considered safer, using the UK/EU as a suggested benchmark. Whether you support the EU science or not, it is something that we will likely have to address in the future.

To wrap on a positive note, I would hate to have a review of 2024 go by without some industry commendation. Because, as a whole, the food industry has done well in taking all these challenges seriously and seeking to improve. While such improvement is sometimes triggered by a disaster or close call, it’s just as often triggered by the awareness that the environment has changed and the business wants to ensure it is optimizing its systems.