Even when companies initiate recalls themselves, they still work with regulators.
There are a lot of them, said Barbara Kowalcyk, director of the Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security at George Washington University.
“We have 15 federal agencies that are charged with the oversight of food, and then thousands of state and local agencies,” she explained.
While the U.S. Department of Agriculture has oversight over meat, poultry, and egg products, “FDA has oversight of about 80% of the food supply, and they have oversight of food safety at the retail level,” Kowalcyk explained.
She said the FDA delegates some of that authority to state and local agencies. She described the system as “very complex, which makes it kind of burdensome sometimes to be able to navigate it quickly.”