Tainted Food May Still Be On Shelves Despite Recalls

According to a new report, it is rather worrying that tainted food may still be on the shelves despite recall and can result in very serious health issues.

The write up talks of one Kenneth Maxwell, who became violently ill after consuming recalled pot pies by Banquet, unaware that they had been recalled. He suffered a separated bicep as a result of exposure to Salmonella from the tainted food consumed.

Experts believe it is a common problem that when there is a recall of a food product, the company sometimes fails to recover all of the products and some of it may inadvertently or otherwise get left in the store.

This tainted food is then purchased and eaten, resulting in exposure to food borne pathogens that can cause serious illnesses.

Consider these statistics about how food recalls are often unsuccessful in large part:

  • Out of 59 recalls in 2009 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 56 were insufficient in terms of the amounts of food recovered.
  • In July 2009, a Denver manufacturer declared a recall of more than 460,000 pounds of ground beef due to a salmonella outbreak. Out of this, however, only 119,000 pounds of the beef was actually recovered.
  • In October, a New York processor announced a recall of 545,000 pounds of ground beef tied to an outbreak of E. coli; it recovered all of 795 pounds, according to the USDA.