Update: Thanks again to Batocchio for sharing this blog on Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Just remember to get out the vote this midterms for every Democratic candidate, and for the love of GOD overcook that mystery meat trump is dumping on our markets!
I honestly cannot recall the last time we have SO MANY different food recalls and warnings at the same time. Edith Olmstead over at the New Republic is tracking the atrocities:
In the last week alone, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recalled twelve different products—a rate four times higher than the same week a year ago.
In the past week, the FDA has discovered salmonella in granola, salad dressing, jalapenos, and animal food; glass in fruit popsicles; and metal in sourdough—just to name a few.
Just yesterday they upgraded a recall on the frozen blueberries sold in my local Publix stores: it had been just a handful of places back in July but now they're worried the E Coli contamination spread to eight other states. Back to Olmstead:
Between August 14 and 20, 2025, the FDA recalled only three products. In the same week in 2024, the FDA recalled only two, according to the FDA website.
It’s not immediately clear whether the increase in recalls can be attributed to increased enforcement or more hazardous food—but the rapid recalls really make you wonder, is this what making America healthy again looks like?
This week of many public health announcements follows a national cyclospora outbreak that has sickened more than 13,000 people and caused two deaths. Last week, the FDA finally dispatched investigators to the facilities linked to the outbreak—nearly a month after linking the parasite to Taylor Farms. Before any of this, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reportedly cut back on parasite monitoring.
Speculate all you want, but the evidence is right there: the federal government under RFK Jr's oversight is slow to respond, and understaffed unto uselessness.
This is the end result of various factors, all of them based on conservative Far Right dogma: The idea that deregulation saves money and reduces bureaucratic demands; the need to gut federal agency staffing to allow businesses - especially large corporations - to do whatever they want; and the libertarian-leaning belief in "enlightened self-interest" that would "encourage" those businesses to self-regulate so that they don't poison people and lose customer bases.
I once got into an online argument with a libertarian over a joke I posted on Twitter (that was another country, and besides the site is dead), which went "three people walked into a libertarian bar and died from toxic bacteria in the drinks. /rimshot" (I was on my pro-bear anti-libertarian rampage at the time) The guy took offense to that, arguing fervently that "enlightened self-interest" of keeping repeat customers would ensure the bar owner would serve only safe drinks. I pointed out the reality that without outside influences - either regulations enforced by law, or a local competitive bar serving their own drinks - a toxic owner will keep serving toxic drinks because a) he will make his profits however he can which means cutting corners and serving high-risk product, and b) because his customers will have nowhere else to go.
(You may notice - as part of the big deregulatory push by Republicans since the Reagan years - a lot of the businesses getting caught with poisoned foods are part of Big Agriculture, which is turning into one monolithic cartel of a handful of corporations in dire need of anti-trust breakups. I digress.)
Well, here we are witnessing as a nation the sudden and dangerous increase of toxic poisoned food products, within two years of a more dangerous and toxic trump presidency that has gutted regulatory agencies - thanks, Elon and Russell Vought! - and allowed an anti-science buffoon like RFK Jr. to wreak havoc across our nation's collective well-being. There IS no "enlightened self-interest": There is only profit margins, and short-sighted self-interest also known as greed.
This IS what deregulation - wide-ranging, reckless, and absolute - looks like, America. And this is the end result, as Josh Johnson highlights:
Alas, the way things are going we are going to need a recall on the Choco Tacos...
