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While all business is risky – Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that 20 percent of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45 percent during the first five years, and 65 percent during the first 10 years -- Food Safety magazine highlighted in January 2024 that the crucial food and beverage industry faces a number of inherent risks.

A large food recall, such as the Quaker recall of specific granola bars and granola cereals in December and January across all 50 states and beyond, can be a logistical nightmare.

Fortunately for food wholesale distributors and retailers, cloud-based traceability technology such as FreshByte Software can help identify and recall contaminated products.

Since 1939, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has been helping consumers ensure the quality and authenticity of certain products through its Standards of Identity (SOI) for Food program.

Today, consumers can trust that everything from canned vegetables to jellies to fruit pies contains what the product says it presents thanks to SOIs – which are essentially an agreed-upon legal definition of what food actually is and was introduced as a means of consumer protection.

Listeria outbreak fears are in the news again this summer with frozen fruit recalls at Walmart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Target, Aldi, and AWG.

Inventory management is important in every sector of the economy, but when it comes to the food industry, the proper inventory software in place can help manage supply chain logistics, ensure the timely delivery of perishables, and most importantly, safeguard consumers with beginning-to-end traceability.

Fast food restaurant chain Wendy’s has taken the precautionary measure to remove romaine lettuce being used in burgers and sandwiches across six states after an E. coli outbreak.

“Investigators are continuing to collect different types of data to identify the food source of this multistate outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 infections,” reported the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a September 1, 2022, update. “A specific food has not yet been confirmed as the source of this outbreak, but many sick people reported eating burgers and sandwiches with romaine lettuce at Wendy’s restaurants before getting sick.”

The food and beverage industry is very competitive so normally it’s great to make the top of any list … except when it comes to the worst food recalls of all time.

That is one list to avoid, but the listeria outbreak at Sara Lee just over two decades ago, unfortunately holds the top spot in the “Eat This, Not That!” rundown published this year of “The 7 Worst Food Recalls of All Time”.

If you are a Texan, then you know that Blue Bell ice cream is high on the Lone Star State’s pantheon of beloved brands, sandwiched somewhere between Buc-ee’s and Whataburger.

You might also recall that Blue Bell was at the center of a high profile multi state listeriosis outbreak, a serious infection caused by eating food contaminated with one of the 20+ species of the listeria bacteria.

Grilling out over the Memorial Day Weekend is a holiday tradition but some Americans might have made the “mis-steak” of using meat products that have been recently recalled and could make their families sick.

When it comes to “Food Fiascos” you need to start with the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) where lax sanitary conditions and unethical actions led to a 2008-09 salmonella outbreak that not only led to illness and death but bankrupted a $25 million company in months and sent its CEO to prison for 28 years in the stiffest penalty ever in a food-borne illness case.

In a final report issued in April 2009, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that a strain of Salmonella serotype Typhimurium, linked to peanut butter sourced back to PCA processing plants, had sickened 714 people across 46 states with nine deaths reported.