The number of food safety recalls was on the rise this year, but most Gen Z buyers didn’t know about them.
A Fast Company-Harris Poll of 1,088 consumers found that older respondents, aged 59 to 77, were far more likely to have heard about a recent recall than younger ones, aged 18 to 27, suggesting that potentially critical information about food-borne illnesses is not reaching segments of consumers who are less likely to get their news through traditional media.
Baby boomers were more likely to have been aware of food recalls in the past year: 69% said they’ve been aware of recalls this year and 62% of them get that information from local news.
Meanwhile, just 26% of Gen Z adults were aware of a recall this year, and 53% get their information from social media. About 39% of millennials (aged 28 to 42) and 52% of Gen Xers (aged 43 to 58) said they’d heard of a recall this year, according to the Harris Poll.
“There are many things here that are indicative of a broken system,” says Vanessa Coffman, director of the Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness, a nonprofit committed to the prevention of foodborne illness.
There is no set formula to reach everyone with news of recalls. A very narrow part of the population will be subscribing to news releases from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
It can sometimes take up to a week before the FDA puts out recall information about a food product, and often a food company releases the recall information first, says Coffman. She argues that the information released by the FDA is confusing with language like “voluntary recall” and “out of abundance of caution” that minimizes the problem. Recall notices also often leave people with no direct information about what to do.
“It’s not action oriented,” she says, “And they’re basically communicating to no one.”
Officials from the USDA did not reply to Fast Company's request for comment. The FDA was not immediately able to provide a comment.
If a recall falls in the woods . . .
The number of food recalls climbed 8% during the first quarter of this year for a total of 909 recalls, the highest quarterly total in the past five years, according to Sedgwick’s Recall Index, which tracks and aggregates recall data across multiple regulatory agencies and industries. As many as 128,000 people are hospitalized and 3,000 people die each year because of food they eat, according to the CDC.
A number of this year’s recalls were high profile, including Trader Joe’s April recall of 62,000 pounds of basil due to a Salmonella outbreak. Cargill Meat Solutions recalled 16,2000 pounds of raw ground beef with possible E. coli contamination that had been sent to Walmart stores in May. In January, Fratelli Beretta issued a recall for more than 11,000 pounds of Busseto Foods charcuterie meat for Salmonella.
The survey implied that if people actually heard about the recall details, it would make a difference. Millennials and Gen Z respondents were far more likely to say they would avoid a retailer associated with a recall (47% and 42%, respectively) than baby boomers (28%).
Industry and health advocates created an informal working group to do research and come up with new strategies for getting information out. The Recall Modernization Group is made up of Coffman and as many as 30 other people from companies like Pepsi, Cargill, Walmart, and Costco, as well as consumers, academics and other subject matter experts and, at times, officials from the FDA and the USDA.
Alternative ways to spread the word about recalls
Loyalty cards at grocery stores have helped, offering text alerts and information on store receipts about recalls, but there are privacy concerns to dance around, says Brian Ronholm, former deputy undersecretary of food safety at the USDA, current head of food policy at Consumer Reports, and a member of the working group.
Stop Foodborne Illness created an email alert system and will be rolling out text messaging alert notifications in the next couple months with Consumer Reports. The group has also created simple templates for social media that agencies can use to release information, and studied media impressions and click-through rates of posts.
“Our statistician couldn't do very many statistical analyzes because the numbers are so small,” Coffman says.
It’s tough to get social media posts in front of younger consumers. “It’s not something they’re going to typically engage with so it’s much more difficult to get the algorithm that captures that audience,” Ronholm
Despite the lack of awareness about problems with food products this year, most consumers (72%) surveyed by our Fast Company-Harris Poll say they feel informed about the quality of the food they buy. This includes 64% of Gen Z and 76% of boomers.