Is the food Americans buy at grocery stores every day safe? If you ask food manufacturers and food safety professionals, you'll likely get an emphatic yes. Despite an increase in food recalls — 578 in 2024 compared to 330 in 2019 — industry insiders would likely say the food we eat today is safer than at any point in U.S. history. Some experts even point out that the increase in recalls is a good sign: Rather than showing a decline in quality, more recalls demonstrate better detection of food safety risks and more aggressive enforcement [archived link].
But food safety experts don't buy enough groceries to support the entire food production industry. Most of America's $1.5 trillion in annual food spending is done by consumers outside the industry, and they have a very different perspective. Surveys by both Gallup and the International Food Information Council (IFIC) show consumer confidence in the safety of their food is down to the lowest levels on record.
To find out why food safety consumer confidence is falling and what this means for brands and producers, we sat down for a conversation with Brian Ronholm, Director of Food Policy for Consumer Reports and former Deputy Under Secretary at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) where he was responsible for oversight of the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). The bottom line: To avoid losing sales from increasingly concerned consumers and rebuild trust, producers must apply a combination of stronger food safety practices, improved supply chain visibility, and increased transparency.
A Sharp Decline in Food Safety Confidence
Looking at the results of the Gallup survey, it's clear food safety has been a growing concern for consumers for decades. In 2004, the survey found that 85% of Americans had either "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of confidence in the federal government's ability to ensure the safety of the food supply in the U.S. In 2024, that number had declined to 57% — down by a third.
Ronholm echoed the report’s findings when asked about root causes: “I think it's probably best described as a gradual process, but then there were milestones along the way… like the E.coli outbreak from the early '90s, spinach and peanuts in the 2000s, to romaine lettuce and the apple cinnamon puree situation in North Carolina more recently.”
High-profile recalls and specific food safety events might accelerate the decline, but the drumbeat of terrifying headlines has had a cumulative impact on perception. Each event — from an E. coli outbreak in 1993 to various E. coli issues throughout the 2010s, and most recently with the lead-contaminated cinnamon apple sauce recall — chips away at the belief that the food we eat is safe to consume.
The apple sauce recall was especially impactful. As Ronholm puts it, "When you see a situation where there is a significant size recall involving pouches that are targeted toward children, that has a way of resonating with consumers." A growing H5 bird flu outbreak is likely to hurt confidence even more in 2025 and beyond.
Big Problems for Food Brands
America's declining trust in the safety of our food supply is bad news for the food business. When shoppers don't trust brands and regulators to be proactive, they take on that responsibility for themselves. That adds to all the other concerns fighting for shoppers’ attention and can dramatically increase their cognitive burden, or cognitive load.
Too much cognitive load and shoppers begin losing the ability to process additional information. In turn, they find ways to reduce the processing they have to do, like simplifying chunks of information from complex and detailed to simple and broad. Instead of remembering which specific products are under recall, consumers often simply write off an entire brand or type of food and add it to a running "we don't buy that anymore" list.
That's precisely what the data suggests is happening. According to the Gallup survey, over half of respondents have avoided buying certain brands or types of food in response to food safety advisories or recalls. "There’s a significant burden on consumers to stay on top of everything… but let's face it, most people just don’t have the time to track every outbreak or heavy metal reading," Ronholm adds. And when customers leave, there's no guarantee that they'll ever come back — without a strong push, consumers tend to stick to patterns and preferences. For brands and producers, at least some portion of these customers are lost for good.
Rebuilding Food Safety Consumer Confidence
Losing confidence is easy, but building it back up can be a long and difficult process. Part of this will require the FDA to change how it monitors, prevents, and responds to food safety incidents — but progress is slow due to the agency’s gradual, incremental approach. By the time they've finished changing direction, there may not be enough confidence left to rebuild.
A better solution is for producers and manufacturers to take the lead in winning consumer hearts and minds using the "Three Ts" framework:
Testing
The first "T" is testing, specifically proactive food safety testing and preventive controls. A recurring key concern for consumers is the reactive nature of regulatory agencies — something goes wrong, and then they spring into action. By that time, consumer confidence has already taken a hit and shoppers have changed their behavior.
For brands, preventing these events is critical. Recalls carry a high price, financially and in brand equity. Instituting proactive food safety practices and building a culture of food safety in plants and facilities is much cheaper, even if it means slightly higher upfront costs. More importantly, it prevents the irreparable damage that being associated with a recall might cause.
Approaches to improve testing include:
- Routine audits
- Preventive controls
- Building a culture of food safety
- Integrating new technologies for real-time contamination tracking
Traceability
Being able to rapidly trace contaminated or otherwise unsafe products to a single facility or supplier allows food companies to respond quickly (and proactively, if the contamination is indeed identified before products reach consumers). As with proactive testing and preventive controls, zooming in on suppliers and recognizing problems before they become disasters is critical to preserving a brand's reputation and rebuilding trust.
Even if contaminated products aren’t detected before reaching consumers, a strong traceability program can help mitigate the fallout from a food safety event. Companies that can quickly pinpoint root causes and communicate these findings to consumers stand a much better chance of getting ahead of negative press and coming out with less reputational damage.
Approaches to improve traceability include:
- Recall-ready communities
- Supply chain monitoring
- Partner and vendor audits
Transparency
Perhaps the most important factor in rebuilding consumer trust is transparency: the willingness to share how brands have determined their food is safe, what procedures they follow, what ingredients they use, how those ingredients were selected, and what steps are being taken to prevent or resolve issues.
Brian Ronholm suggests companies focus on ingredient transparency for the most significant impact on rebuilding confidence. "I think the key to that would ultimately be transparency, and that's being transparent about ingredients. What would give consumers a lot of confidence is if we close that [GRAS] loophole."
Approaches to improve transparency include:
- Standardized audit results
- Published ingredient testing and selection methodologies and results
- Public source identification
Maintaining Trust in a Scary World
As professionals, we’re involved in food safety every day. We see the audits, design the processes, and read the results. Confidence is easy when we’re confronted with mountains of evidence.
Unfortunately, most of that evidence doesn't make it to consumers. They don't see the recall that never was because an effective preventive control stopped contamination from reaching a product; they see the headlines about the recall that wasn't caught in time. A commitment to transparency, supported by traceability and testing, is the missing link that explains both declining consumer confidence and the confidence gap between people in and out of the industry. And it will help brands win back customers who increasingly seek safer alternatives.
For help building a food safety program that builds confidence and brings consumers back, explore AIB International’s Regulatory Readiness service today.
