It probably seems like every day you're reading a new headline about a recalled food item—be it onions on McDonald's hamburgers, baby carrots, or Boar's Head cold cuts. You're not imagining that influx.
According to a February 2025 report from the compliance company Traceone, the total number of food recalls issued by the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture grew by 15% between 2020 and 2024. Experts suggest this could be due to various factors, including advancements in technology for identifying harmful pathogens and challenges with staffing and sanitation at manufacturing plants.
In the United States, the FDA and the USDA have many regulations that food manufacturers must comply with. When a noncompliant product makes it to stores' shelves, restaurants, or Americans' homes, the manufacturer typically issues a recall. Then, the FDA, in most cases, and the USDA—in cases involving meat, poultry, and egg products—work to alert the public about any items that may be in their pantries or refrigerators and could be unsafe to consume.
Food recalls are issued for a wide range of reasons, including foodborne pathogens, mislabeled allergens, or contamination with foreign material. The FDA maintains a real-time list of active food recalls—in May 2025 alone, the FDA issued multiple recall notices tied to a Salmonella outbreak among cucumbers, affecting produce sold at Walmart, Albertsons, Tops, Weis, and more.
Of course, following these alerts can be overwhelming at best and concerning at worst. The public's perception of the federal government's ability to keep America's food supply safe reached a 25-year low in 2024, according to Gallup data. Based on their latest poll last year, 28% of U.S. adults don't have much confidence in the government's ability to keep the food supply safe, and an additional 14% have no confidence at all. The majority (57%) said they have a "great deal" or "fair amount" of confidence, but that's down 11 percentage points from Gallup's 2019 survey five years prior.
To help keep you aware of recent recalls, Stacker compiled a list of all food and beverage recalls issued by the FDA each month. It's important to note that only particular batches of foods and beverages are typically recalled; you can check the FDA's site for details on which specific batches are affected, based on the Universal Product Code located on the packaging.
Read on to learn more about what you should be wary of this month, as of May 30, 2025.
Editor's note: Images in this article were provided by the FDA. If no image was provided or if the image quality was low, a stock image was used instead.
