North Texas food industry insiders respond, what's up with all the food recalls?
DALLAS — From products pulled from shelves and warnings placed in aisles, a trip to the grocery store might look different due to a growing list of listeria outbreaks and recalls.
"It's just very scary. You just kind of pray at night, you know?" said Aldi shopper, Jeremy McDonnell.
According to the USDA, listeria outbreaks are affecting green onions and millions of pounds of chicken supplied by BrucePac, a supplier based out of Durant, OK. The affected products were sold at multiple grocery chains including Trader Joe's, Albertsons, and Tom Thumb.
Thursday, the USDA also announced an expanded recall on waffles and pancakes sold at grocery stores including Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. In addition, an e-coli outbreak has recently affected onions sold on the McDonald's quarter pounder burger in 10 states, resulting in 50 people reported sick, and one death.
The USDA has a full list of the most recent recalls on the FDA's website.
North Texas shoppers are both shocked and concerned with the number of recent food item recalls.
"That was surprising. Like, it's never been something I heard of," McDonnell said.
"It's unfortunate," said shopper Shary Fein. "This is my Trader Joe's."
The question remains, why is this happening to our food? Food industry insiders tell CBS News Texas mistakes are bound to happen due to how "processed" our food is.
"It is unusual to have this many outbreaks especially back to back," said Sherif Mityas, CEO of Brix Holdings. "It's really a cleanliness issue. It's something wasn't handled correctly, something wasn't cleansed correctly."
Brix Holdings owns multiple restaurants in DFW, including Clean Juice in Dallas, which doesn't use any processors to get their food products. Mitayas said the outbreaks are a product of over-processing.
"For a restaurant, cost the labor to cut fries from a potato inside a restaurant is extreme. So if a restaurant can save money by getting a process to bag of fries, it saves the money- but that comes with risk and comes with complexity," Mityas said.
"So it's this balancing act that restaurants have to play, but it's unfortunately not going to slow down cost issues, inflationary pressures. Right now, we are going to continue to live in a processed world."
Mityas said he believes the uptick in recalls is largely due to improved technology and tracking that can catch outbreaks sooner.
"I think as a restaurant, we have to be overly communicative and overly transparent. We need to tell you where your food's coming from. But at the end of the day, you have a better chance of being struck by lightning than getting E Coli from a restaurant," he said.
"From a consumer perspective, just understand that the brands that you're visiting."
For shoppers like Fein, she said her solution includes sticking to Whole Foods.
"Honestly, I wash everything anyway, so hopefully that would be enough to clear me of listeria," said Fein.