Understanding the Recent Food Safety Recalls and Mitigating Contamination Risks from Farm to Finished Product

Recent recalls involving lettuce, peppers, and sprouts serve as an unfortunate though timely reminder that fresh-produce safety depends on controls that operate continuously across farms, growing houses, packing facilities, and supply chains. The food products recently recalled differ, as do the organisms of concern compromising them, but these contamination risks are interconnected. And, as we’ve seen these risks play out across a spate of produce items this past summer, a single weak control can have far-reaching consequences.

For food businesses, recalls can disrupt or even fully shut down operations, strain customer relationships, damage hard-earned trust, and force organizations into costly reactive decisions. The strongest response, therefore, must include (at least) a faster recall plan, but more importantly, a preventative food safety system that identifies hazards early, verifies that controls work, and remains effective after the food safety auditor leaves the facility. 

Different products come with interconnected risks. 

Fresh produce can encounter hazards at multiple points before reaching consumers. At the farm level, potential pathways include agricultural water, raw or inadequately managed soil amendments, wildlife and domestic animals, nearby livestock operations, weather events, worker hygiene, and sanitation failures. Open canals may be exposed to animal activity, while heavy rain can affect water quality. Wind and surrounding land uses can also influence field conditions. These risks require site-specific assessment rather than assumptions based on distance alone.

Water deserves particular attention because it can spread contamination repeatedly across a crop or growing system. A water source that appeared acceptable previously may change after rainfall, flooding, infrastructure problems, or other environmental intrusions, such as upstream landslides or migration patterns of animals. Testing frequency should therefore reflect the source, season, operation, and risk.

Product characteristics also matter. Lettuce and other leafy greens may undergo washing and sanitizing at a packing or fresh-cut facility, but downstream treatment cannot stand as a guaranteed remedy for contamination introduced in the field. Peppers may be handled differently because introducing water can create additional cross-contamination or microbial-growth concerns. Sprouts present a distinct challenge: seeds originate upstream, while warm, humid, water-intensive growing conditions can amplify pathogens if contaminated seed or water enters the process. Plus, even correctly titrated chlorine-treated water used to thoroughly wash sprouts cannot penetrate the unique seed body of the sprout — this means any potential pathogens that may have already established a presence within the seed will remain there after intensive washing.

Compliance is non-negotiable, but solid food safety culture must be the baseline.

Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) and the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Final Rule on Produce Safety establish an important foundation for controlling produce hazards. Audit protocols and government inspections can add structure and accountability; however, an audit is only a single snapshot in time. Facility and growing conditions can change immediately afterward, and a certificate cannot substitute for daily execution, management oversight, or verification.

This is especially important when companies source from contract growers or farms they do not own. Purchasing specifications and periodic audits are not enough if no one is routinely evaluating water management, neighboring land use, worker practices, sanitation, corrective actions, and changing field conditions. Supplier oversight must be active, risk-based, and documented throughout the season.

The value of a mature food safety culture cannot be overstated. A strong food safety culture functions in concert with every aspect of an agricultural company’s operations and, ideally, proves that “prevention is the best cure.” Among other benefits, an efficient and reliable culture of impeccable food safety makes resources available before a crisis. Ensuring approved testing kits are used; seeking regular laboratory analysis; vetting qualified staff; offering routine, multilingual training and supervision; and following up on corrective-actions are a few examples of preventative measures that serve as core controls to help reduce risk and prevent the worst possible outcomes (such as human health emergencies and food product recalls). When budget pressure leads to reduced sampling or incomplete verification, the organization loses visibility into whether its preventative system is working. In other words, skimping on preventative measures is never worth it, especially when the risks and costs can be so high that human well-being may be compromised and company reputation may be irrecoverable.  

Six Priorities for Stronger Prevention

The threat of having to experience and manage the exceptionally high risks and costs of food recalls can be diminished with proper attention and adherence to uncompromising food safety standards at every critical control point throughout production. Six main priorities for agricultural companies to implement as a means to reducing the risk of recalls include:

1. Map hazards from source to shipment. Evaluate agricultural water, soil amendments, animals, surrounding land uses, weather, employee practices, equipment, packing steps, and transportation. Reassess whenever conditions change.
2. Strengthen water management. Identify each source, understand how it can be contaminated, establish risk-based testing, and define actions for adverse results or events such as heavy rainfall.
3. Validate critical controls. Sanitizer concentrations, contact times, wash systems, and other interventions should be supported by evidence that they achieve the intended reduction under actual operating conditions. Maintain records and revalidate after material changes.
4. Verify through meaningful testing. Testing should answer a specific food safety question, not simply satisfy a checklist. Sprout operations, for example, may use spent irrigation water sampling during the growing cycle to detect hazards before release.
5. Train the workforce in front of you. Training must be understandable, practical, and provided in employees’ preferred languages. Supervisors should observe behaviors such as handwashing and reinforce expectations consistently.
6. Turn audits into continuous improvement. Use internal reviews, supplier monitoring, trend analysis, and corrective-action verification between formal audits. Leadership should regularly ask not only whether a control exists, but whether it remains effective.

Certifications to Consider 

Choosing to align your food safety operations with a more rigorous certification scheme can help move beyond minimum regulatory compliance and apply a more comprehensive, consistent framework for food safety management. Standards recognized by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) are some of the most rigorous options for food safety certification. Whether an organization pursues certification or voluntarily benchmarks its practices against more demanding criteria, the process can help strengthen audit coverage, reinforce good agricultural practices, identify gaps across critical control areas, and create clearer expectations for farms and suppliers.

Rigorous, produce-focused audit programs can provide similar benefits when their checklists address the full range of relevant farm and operational risks. Primus Labs uses a stringent audit checklist within the produce industry. A demanding checklist can help organizations evaluate controls systematically and promote greater accountability, but even the most robust audit only reflects conditions at a particular point in time. As mentioned previously, an audit value is greatest when organizations use the findings to support continuous monitoring, corrective-action verification, employee training, and day-to-day management after the auditor has left.

For more information about specific food safety certifications, see our frequently asked question (FAQs) section below. 

Act before every root cause becomes a cause for public concern.  

Outbreak investigations can remain ongoing, and definitive, root-cause findings may not be immediately available. Such was the case with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the June 2026 cyclosporia outbreak. The FDA did not declare the outbreak over until 11 September 2026, which was also when news outlets started reporting it as the United States’ “largest recorded multistate cyclosporiasis outbreak.”  Needless to say, an outbreak can be ongoing and causing immense damage, but official findings from formal investigations may not come for months.  

Companies should not fill those time gaps with speculation, but neither should they wait passively. An active recall is a prompt to mobilize an internal review to examine whether similar conditions exist in your own operations and supply chains.

Such an internal review should be disciplined, rigorous, and repeatable. Any individual employee should be able to understand what steps were taken to identify comparable products and processes along with the vulnerabilities within those processes. The same internal review should inspect recent environmental and water results, confirm supplier compliance, examine deviations and corrective actions, and test recall and traceability readiness. Though the purpose is not to presume or investigate the cause of an outbreak at another company, emerging events can serve as a stress test for one’s own system.  

Activate a plan to move from recall response to everyday resilience.

The recent recalls remind those of us working in the food and agricultural sectors that food safety, especially with regards to fresh fruits and vegetables, is created through many controls working together, every day. Farms, growing houses, packers, processors, buyers, and brand owners each influence the outcome. The most resilient organizations combine regulatory compliance with vigilant supplier oversight, validated interventions, risk-based testing, effective training, and a culture that treats food safety as an operational priority.

Recalls will continue to test the food system. Businesses cannot eliminate every environmental variable, but they can reduce uncertainty by investing in prevention, monitoring change, and acting on evidence. That is how organizations move beyond reacting to recalls to building safer products, stronger supply chains, and greater confidence among customers and consumers.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best food safety certifications for U.S. manufacturers?

The best certifications for manufacturers in the United States combine manufacturing expertise, regulatory knowledge, independent verification, and practical implementation support. U.S. manufacturers should look for certifications that can assess hazards, strengthen food safety management systems, improve traceability and recall readiness, review supplier controls, and prepare facilities for recognized certification schemes.  

GFSI-benchmarked programs such as SQF, BRCGS, and FSSC 22000 may be relevant depending on the product, customer, and market. As a food safety consultant, we look at many factors when recommending a certification including the manufactuer's products, regulatory exposure, and facility to ensure that a certification chosen is the best fit for the organization seeking it. 

What are the top food safety consulting options for multi-site plants?

Multi-site operators benefit most from consulting providers that can standardize expectations while adapting controls to each location’s activities and risks. Key capabilities include enterprise-wide gap assessments, harmonized procedures, site-specific hazard reviews, internal auditor training, corrective-action tracking, and coordinated certification or audit schedules.  

Consulting providers should also have sufficient geographic coverage, consultants with previous auditing experience or relevant auditing knowledge, and demonstrated experience working across farms, packinghouses, storage, distribution, and processing facilities.  

Depending on the business, PrimusGFS can support multiple fresh-produce operation types, while GLOBALG.A.P. accommodates multisite operations and offers related handling and chain-of-custody options. Before selecting an approach, companies should map every site and activity, then confirm that the chosen scheme and scope satisfy buyer requirements.

How do we find food safety consulting providers that focus on end-to-end supply chain risk?

Choose a provider that can connect supplier verification, documentation review, product testing, traceability, certification, and regulatory compliance across the full supply chain. Effective end-to-end programs should examine how products move from farms and ingredient suppliers through packing, processing, storage, distribution, and the final customer.  

They should also integrate requirements such as FSMA preventive controls and the Foreign Supplier Verification Program with buyer-specific standards. For fresh produce, PrimusGFS can cover operations from farms and harvest crews through packinghouses, storage, distribution, and processing. GLOBALG.A.P. also offers related options for production, post-harvest handling, and chain of custody. The strongest provider is one that can match these tools to the organization’s actual suppliers, legal entities, sites, products, and destination markets.

Which food safety consulting services help reduce recall risk most effectively?

The most effective food safety consulting services address both prevention and response. Priority capabilities include supplier audits, hazard analysis, food safety management system development, traceability design, mock recalls, water and input controls, sanitation review, product or environmental testing, employee training, and corrective-action verification. Traceability is especially important because it allows a company to identify affected lots quickly, limit the scope of a recall, and document due diligence.  

Pre-assessments and gap analyses can reveal weaknesses before a formal audit or incident, while independent, third-party verification adds credibility with regulators and buyers. No consultant can eliminate recall risk or guarantee product safety, so companies should favor providers that build repeatable internal controls and verify implementation rather than merely supplying policies or completing a one-time checklist.

What is the best food safety consulting for agriculture producers?

Agricultural producers should select consulting that understands farm-level hazards, buyer acceptance, and the scope of growing, harvesting, packing, storage, and transportation activities. Valuable services include GAP pre-assessments, water-quality and input-control reviews, facility hygiene, and training programs, traceability and mock recall development, documentation support, and preparation for the certification scheme required by the buyer.  

Agricultural companies should consider GLOBALG.A.P., PrimusGFS, and Harmonized GAP audit services alongside pre-assessments, food safety training, and complementary supply-chain programs. GLOBALG.A.P. IFA v6 GFS is particularly relevant for internationally sourced produce requiring GFSI recognition; PrimusGFS can span farm and facility operations; and USDA Harmonized GAP Plus+ may suit U.S. specialty-crop operations whose buyers accept it. Producers should first obtain the buyer’s accepted-program list and required scope, then choose an accredited provider with experience in their crop, geography, and operation type.

Why do growing food companies outgrow basic food safety consulting?

As food companies expand, their risks and obligations become more complex. A basic program may be adequate for one facility or a limited supplier base, but growth can introduce new sites, products, markets, contract growers, foreign suppliers, processing steps, buyer standards, and regulatory requirements. Informal records and supplier questionnaires may no longer provide the traceability, objectivity, or audit-ready evidence that regulators and customers expect. 

Growing companies often need standardized procedures across locations, stronger supplier verification, digital document and lot tracking, mock recall capability, internal auditing, corrective-action governance, and preparation for GFSI-benchmarked certification. They may also need coordinated audits to reduce duplication and audit fatigue. At that stage, consulting must evolve from isolated compliance tasks to a scalable food safety management and supply-chain verification system. Providers with multidisciplinary expertise, geographic reach, accredited certification capabilities, and training resources can help businesses integrate these requirements as operations evolve.

Do you have more questions or need more detailed support or clarification? Feel free to schedule time to speak with our food safety consulting experts today.  

About the Author

Heena Patel serves as Director of Food Safety Consulting & Technical Services for SCS Consulting Services. Prior to joining SCS Consulting Services, Heena worked for SCS Global Services and was named SQF Auditor of the Year in 2015. Her food safety auditing and certification expertise includes SQF, BRC, FSSC 22000, ISO 2001, HACCP, GMP, farm audits, organic, ethical sourcing, food security, and quality, and she is an experienced food safety trainer. Heena earned her triple Bachelor of Science degree in Food Microbiology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Learn more about our food safety consulting services.