The number of foodborne illness investigations the U.S. Food and Drug Administration runs at once recently reached a record 19 and has since come down. As of the most recent revision of the agency's public investigation table, dated September 2, sixteen investigations are listed as active, and twelve of those carry an ongoing outbreak status. The rest have ended or been folded into larger investigations.
That easing matters less to household budgets than it might sound. Any of those investigations can produce a recall, and a recall means throwing away food a family already paid for. The average American household spends more than $10,000 a year on groceries, and prices have risen more than 18 percent since 2022, according to an Axios analysis of affordability and food safety. When a bag of jalapeños or a carton of eggs gets pulled, the loss lands on a bill that is already stretched.
