We’ve got stones in our ice cream, glass in our mung beans, and dead mice in our peppers. It seems like every day Americans are hearing about a weird new food or product recall.
Things have gotten so bad that it seems like insisting your product hasn’t been recalled has become something to brag about.
Take a look at the opening paragraph to this new article from NBC Selected, which promotes products and features affiliate links:
A toothpaste brand you won’t find on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s list of recalled products this week? Colgate. And not only is it safe to use, but one of its most popular whitening formulas is 47 percent off right now, coming in at under $10 for a pack of three. That’s more than enough of a reason to stock up.
Why are they talking about toothpaste recalls? Because four million tubes of toothpaste were recalled by the FDA last month and this week it received a new class designation, which communicates how severe it may be.
The company Pritam International Private Limited initiated the recall, which includes the Brush Buddies kids toothpaste, and on Oct. 19, it was designated as Class II, which the FDA describes as “a situation in which use of or exposure to a violative product may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences or where the probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote.”
Sadly, it seems like a “our product isn’t involved in that recent recall” is a decent sales pitch. I recently saw the sign below at a grocery store in San Diego, California: “Shop with confidence. The eggs we carry are not affected by the current recall.”
I took the photo on Oct. 12, but it’s unclear how old the sign might be. There were a few egg recalls over the summer, including one that involved 19 million eggs. But it’s yet another demonstration of where we seem to be as a country.
Recent recalls have included everything from 1.5 million pounds of meat that wasn’t stored in cold enough temperatures to smoked salmon contaminated with listeria. The deluge of recalls seems to never end.
The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) saw a 40% spike in food safety complaints about meat, poultry, and eggs in 2025, with the most common type of complaint being the presence of foreign material. We don’t have the figures for 2026 yet, but it seems like a safe bet that things will continue to trend in the wrong direction.
Why does that seem like a safe bet? The U.S. federal government’s public health and food safety infrastructure has been decimated thanks to President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
If your product wasn’t recalled, it’s now something to brag about. Great job, America. We did it.
