So far this year, there have already been 33 recalls of FSIS-regulated products because they were misbranded or contained undeclared allergens. The smallest recall involved only 45 pounds of soup, and the largest involved 2,485,374 pounds of breaded chicken products. In total, more than 5 million pounds of food products have been recalled this year for misbranding or undeclared allergens.
Notably, many of these recalls are not the processor’s fault. Instead, the issue arises when the processor receives ingredients from a supplier that contain undeclared allergens, and the problem is only discovered after the ingredients are used. In the case mentioned above, involving nearly 2.5 million pounds of breaded chicken products, the problem was discovered after the company received notification from an ingredient supplier the bread crumbs the company received and used in the recalled products potentially contained undeclared milk. In other examples, the processor thought it was appropriately declaring the allergens in its products, only to learn that its label supplier supplied the wrong labels or made a printing mistake.