With the Thanksgiving holiday less than a week away, top of mind for many consumers has been the recent spike in food recalls, from organic carrots and ground beef to frozen waffles and Costco salmon.

In an interview with NJ Spotlight News, Dr. Don Schaffner of Rutgers’ Department of Food Science said a handful of pathogens drive most of the recalls and the oversight has gotten considerably tighter.

“I would say the challenges for the food industry are getting even harder, because the CDC and other public health agencies are getting even better at finding problems,” said Schaffner, chair of the Department of Food Science.

This week the Food and Drug Administration reassured the public the U.S. food supply is still “one of the safest in the world.” According to data from the FDA, high-risk recalls were not unusually high this past year.

From October 2023 to September 2024, the FDA issued 179 recalls for food and cosmetic products under its highest classification, which it defines as the possibility of “serious adverse health consequences or death.” This is up from the 145 cases a year before, but down from the 185 recalls with the same classification during fiscal year 2022.

“Thanks to technology like whole genome sequencing, those agencies are able to link cases they haven’t previously been able to link,” Schaffner said. “So that means that the food industry is kind of in a situation like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. They have to keep running as fast as they can just to stay in the same place.”

On average, the two federal agencies that oversee the U.S. food supply — the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture — announce more than 300 food recalls and alerts each year.