199 FDA Food Recalls: The USTA Recall Index

Food gets recalled every week, but the public rarely sees the whole stream in one place. The USTA Food Recall Index is a sealed census of the FDA's own food enforcement feed: on July 13, 2026, the FDA-enforcement clock froze its count of distinct food recalls and published it without alteration. Every figure below is a verbatim count of recalls the clock actually observed.

Here is the scope, stated plainly: food recalls and enforcement actions in the U.S. FDA's openFDA food enforcement feed, as captured and sealed daily by the US Tech Automations FDA-enforcement clock, deduplicated to 199 distinct recall events as of July 13, 2026. This covers the FDA food enforcement feed only — not USDA/FSIS meat-and-poultry recalls, and not drug or device recalls.

A recall is not a headline; it is a database row with a class and a status.

The Census in One Number

On the sealed snapshot, the feed held 199 distinct FDA food recalls, with initiation dates running from December 15, 2025 back-to-front through June 9, 2026. Each recall is counted once, using its most recent observation, so a recall re-published daily as its status changes is still a single row here.

199 distinct FDA food recalls were sealed on July 13, 2026.

The number is deliberately literal. It is not a projection of how many recalls "really" happened, nor an attempt to model the ones this feed misses. It is a count of distinct records that exist in one public FDA feed — a floor you can stand on, not an estimate you have to trust.

The span itself is worth noting. The earliest initiation date in the feed is December 15, 2025, and the latest is June 9, 2026, so the 199 recalls cover roughly half a year of enforcement activity as the FDA recorded it — not a single week's news cycle, but a standing backlog captured at one instant.

What This Index Is — and Is Not

The unit is a distinct FDA recall_number; the most recent observation of each recall is used, so a recall re-published daily as its status updates is counted once. Classification and status below are the FDA's own structured labels, ungrouped — no recall reason or severity is inferred from the free-text product description.

This is a census of one FDA feed — not the universe of every U.S. food recall.

Shares are computed over the distinct recalls captured in this feed, which is not the universe of all U.S. food recalls. A state with few recalls here may simply file through channels this feed does not carry. Read every percentage as "share of the 199," never as a national rate.

How Serious Are These Recalls?

The FDA assigns each recall a class. Class I = reasonable probability of serious health consequences or death; Class II = temporary or medically reversible consequences; Class III = unlikely to cause adverse consequences. These are the FDA's own definitions, and we quote them rather than reword them.

75 recalls are Class I, a 37.7% share of the feed.

The plurality sits in Class II at 94 recalls and a 47.2% share — the medically reversible middle. But the Class I count is the one that matters most operationally: 75 recalls carry the FDA's highest severity label, more than a third of everything in the feed. That is not a rounding error you can wave away.

Where the Recalls Stand

A recall's status says whether the FDA still considers it active. The feed skews heavily toward ongoing actions, which is what you would expect from a window that reaches up to recent initiation dates.

187 of 199 recalls remain ongoing, 94.0% of the feed.

Only 7 recalls are terminated and 5 completed. The lopsided 94.0% ongoing share is a reminder that a recall is a process, not an event: most of these are still working through the supply chain on the day we sealed the count. That is precisely why a point-in-time census is worth publishing — it captures the queue as it actually stood.

The status split also shapes how a buyer should watch the feed. With so many recalls ongoing, the useful question is not "did anything get recalled" but "did anything that touches my shelves move into or out of active status this week" — the kind of standing check our guide to restaurant health-inspection preparation applies to a different but adjacent compliance clock.

Which States Show Up Most

Each recall carries a reporting-firm state. The distribution is concentrated: a single state accounts for one in five recalls, and the top handful cover most of the feed.

Idaho leads the states with 41 recalls, a 20.6% share.

Idaho's 20.6% share is the kind of number that looks surprising until you remember what it measures: the state where the recalling firm is registered, not where the food was eaten. A single large processor can put its home state at the top of a feed like this. California follows at 27 recalls and 13.6%, with Florida and New York tied at 23 each and 11.6%.

Below the leaders, the distribution thins quickly: Wisconsin at 18 recalls and 9.0%, Pennsylvania at 17 and 8.5%, North Carolina at 12 and 6.0%, then a long tail of states like Texas at 4 and 2.0%. Because these are firm-registration states, the ranking is really a map of where recalling companies incorporate, not where risk concentrates on the plate.

The Recent 90-Day Slice

Narrowing to recalls initiated in the most recent 90-day window leaves 152 of the 199. The bulk of the feed, in other words, is recent activity rather than long-tail actions dragged in from months ago.

152 of 199 recalls fall in the recent 90-day window.

This index is brand new — its first sealed edition — so it makes no trend claim. There is no prior month to compare against, and we will not manufacture one. The 152 figure describes recency within a single snapshot; it is not a rate of change, and it must not be read as one until a second edition exists to measure against.

What the slice does tell you is composition: 152 of the 199 recalls were initiated inside the recent 90-day window, so the feed is weighted toward fresh activity rather than old actions still lingering on the books. A feed skewed that way is a feed where monitoring pays off, because most of what you would act on entered the data in the last three months.

What Recalls Mean for Food and Supply-Chain Operations

For anyone who makes, distributes, or sells food, a recall is a clock starting. The distance between "the FDA posted it" and "we pulled affected lots and notified our customers" is measured in hours, and 75 Class I recalls in a single feed is a reminder that some of those clocks are life-and-safety clocks.

US Tech Automations builds the workflows that shorten that gap: feeds that watch the openFDA enforcement data, match new recall_numbers against your supplier and SKU lists, and fire the internal alerts and customer notices the moment a match lands. Our guide to collecting supplier compliance certificates covers the upstream side — knowing which vendors touch which lots before a recall ever hits.

The downstream side is process discipline. A recall response that depends on someone remembering to check a government website is a response that will be late. Our write-up on food-waste and menu tracking shows how the same automation backbone that handles inventory and menu data can carry recall matching without new headcount.

The practical read is timing. With 187 recalls ongoing at once, the feed is rarely quiet, and the operators who fare best are the ones who treat recall monitoring as a standing automated job rather than a fire drill someone runs by hand when the news breaks.

Questions Operators Ask

Q: How many FDA food recalls are in this index?

A: The index captured 199 distinct FDA food recalls in the openFDA food enforcement feed as of July 13, 2026. That is a count of distinct recall_numbers, deduplicated to the most recent observation of each, not an estimate of every recall nationwide.

Q: What do the recall classes mean?

A: They are the FDA's own severity labels. Class I means a reasonable probability of serious health consequences or death and covers 75 recalls; Class II, temporary or medically reversible consequences, covers 94; Class III, unlikely to cause adverse consequences, covers 29. We quote the definitions rather than infer severity ourselves.

Q: Does this include meat, poultry, or drug recalls?

A: No. The scope is the FDA food enforcement feed only. It excludes USDA/FSIS meat-and-poultry recalls, and it excludes drug and device recalls entirely. Reading it as an all-food or all-product total would overstate what the feed contains.

Q: Is this a trend, or a snapshot?

A: A snapshot. This is the first sealed edition of the index, so it makes no trend claim. The 152 recalls in the recent 90-day window describe recency inside one snapshot, not a month-over-month change. A trend needs a second sealed edition, which does not exist yet.

Q: Why does one state dominate the list?

A: The state field is the recalling firm's registered location, not where the product was sold or consumed. Idaho's 20.6% share reflects where firms are based; a single large processor can lift its home state to the top of a feed like this.

Method and Provenance

Every count is a verbatim count of distinct FDA recall_numbers the clock actually captured; nothing is estimated or modeled. Classification (Class I/II/III) and status are the FDA's own structured labels, ungrouped. No recall reason or severity is inferred from the free-text product description. Each recall is counted once using its most recent observation.

Shares are over the distinct recalls captured in this feed, which is not the universe of all U.S. food recalls. The FDA-enforcement clock reads the openFDA food enforcement feed daily and content-hashes each sealed edition, so any figure here can be traced back to the exact records that produced it — nothing is estimated, modeled, or extrapolated.

Source: US Tech Automations Research — Food Recall Index, sealed July 2026 edition, from the openFDA food enforcement / recall feed (FDA food recalls only; not USDA/FSIS, drug, or device recalls).