How many food recalls are there each year?

The FDA classified 575 food recalls in 2025; the busiest year since 2013 was 2016, with 782. About 4 in 10 food recalls from 2013 to 2025 were Class I, the most serious kind. A recall counts once however many products it covers, in the year FDA first listed it in its weekly Enforcement Report. Meat, poultry and most egg products are recalled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, not the FDA, and aren't included.

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Key facts

Measure: Food recalls. Written from the data below.

  • The latest figure, for 2025, is 575.
  • That is up 5% from 548 in 2013.
  • The highest was 782 in 2016.
  • The lowest was 420 in 2020.

The bigger picture, in plain words: Are food recalls going up?

This chart is one of the 50 in The U.S. in 50 charts, 2026, a yearly report of the key numbers on how the country is doing.

What was recalled lately? See every food recall in October 2026, or any month since 2020, in plain words.

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Source and date

Source
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Enforcement Reports (openFDA food recall data)
License
Public domain (U.S. government work); source U.S. Food and Drug Administration, openFDA
Data as of
Published

Citation

Chartly. “How many food recalls are there each year?” Chart. Data: U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Enforcement Reports (openFDA food recall data), https://open.fda.gov/apis/food/enforcement/ (data as of December 31, 2025). https://chart.ly/charts/food-recalls-per-year (accessed November 5, 2026).

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The data

Download data (CSV)

The file has the numbers in this table, with the source, license and date. Please credit the source and Chartly. Developers can also get them as JSON (how).

Year FDA classified the recall Food recalls
2013 548
2014 567
2015 583
2016 782
2017 699
2018 578
2019 502
2020 420
2021 448
2022 438
2023 480
2024 461
2025 575

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