If you’ve been paying attention to food recalls over the last year, you might have noticed that Listeria is everywhere. Your imagination isn’t playing tricks on you. From a massive Boar’s Head deli meat recall that ballooned from 200,000 pounds to an astounding 7 million pounds of contaminated meat to the countless batches of tainted almond milk, mushrooms, frozen waffles, veggies and more, this sneaky bacteria has triumphantly garnered our collective attention. The saving grace in all of this? The USDA is enhancing its testing efforts to catch Listeria before, they hope, it reaches our refrigerators.
The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced that they’ll be rolling out stronger testing measures for Listeria beginning in January 2025, which, in turn, might lead to more food recalls. But, ultimately, this is a good thing. While it might be worrying to see more food being recalled, it’s a practice that’s rooted in prevention. Consider it analogous to modernizing your home’s safety equipment–a sensitive smoke detector might go off every time you burn the toast (annoying, I know from experience), but it’ll also flag you to more potential fires.
What Prompted These Changes?
The significant string of foodborne illness outbreaks and large-scale Listeria-related recalls, particularly in ready-to-eat meat and poultry products, may have pushed FSIS to look closer at their testing procedures. The Boar’s Head outbreak alone caused 61 illnesses, 60 hospitalizations and, tragically, 10 deaths, making it clear that our current detection systems needed an upgrade.
New Testing Guidelines: What’s Changing?
In January 2025, the FSIS will establish a more rigorous approach to Listeria testing. Instead of focusing solely on Listeria monocytogenes (the troublemaker bacteria that can make us sick), they’ll also test for all types of Listeria in ready-to-eat foods and on surfaces that come into contact with food. Think of it like swapping out reading glasses for magnifying glasses, which allows inspectors to better detect early warning signs.
The agency is also recruiting more experts to sit on the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF), which advises on the country’s regulatory approach and guides policy changes. In addition, it’ll be beefing up inspector training, requiring weekly verification of facilities’ Listeria-related risk factors, and much more. They’ll be checking everything from new construction to damaged equipment and even cracked floors that could harbor bacteria. Yes, they’re, quite literally, looking into every crack and crevice to make food even safer.
The focus on ready-to-eat products isn’t random. These foods, like deli meats and prepared meals, go straight from package to plate without any cooking step to kill harmful bacteria. The Boar’s Head recall highlighted this vulnerability. The contamination affected everything from liverwurst to ham and kielbasa, products many of us eat without heating.
What to Know About Listeria
While we wait for these new measures to kick in, it’s worth knowing what we’re dealing with. Listeria is a surprisingly hardy bacteria that can survive and even thrive in your refrigerator.
Symptoms can show up within a few hours or take up to three days to appear, and they can range from mild (fever, muscle aches, nausea, and vomiting) to severe (headache, stiff neck, confusion, and convulsions). Vulnerable populations, like the very young, the elderly, and anyone with a weakened immune system, are more susceptible to illness and even death. Within the vulnerable population are pregnant people, who are 10 times more likely to get sick from Listeria compared to other healthy adults.
The Bottom Line
Although we might see more food recalls on the horizon, they may signal improved safety monitoring more than a decline in food quality. It’s all in the name of prevention. In the meantime, keep washing your hands, cleaning your produce, wiping down your food prep surfaces and refrigerators and staying informed about recalls through the FDA and FSIS websites—and our recall alerts.
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