Meat & Poultry Recalls

About USDA Meat & Poultry Recalls

Meat, poultry, and processed egg products — including beef, pork, lamb, chicken, turkey, hot dogs, deli meats, and dried sausages — fall under the jurisdiction of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), not the FDA. This distinction matters: if you see a recall for ground beef or chicken tenders, it will come from FSIS, not from the FDA's food recall database.

The most common reasons for USDA meat recalls are bacterial contamination — particularly Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella, and E. coli O157:H7 — as well as undeclared allergens in processed products, foreign material contamination, and products produced under insanitary conditions. FSIS inspectors are present in meat and poultry processing plants every day the facility operates, which is why contamination events still occur: the bacteria can persist in plant environments even with daily oversight.

Ready-to-eat (RTE) products — deli meats, cooked sausages, hot dogs — carry the highest Listeria risk because they are not cooked again before eating. Listeria thrives at refrigerator temperatures and can contaminate products long after they leave the facility if the plant's equipment harbors a persistent colony. When a Listeria recall is issued for an RTE product, it is classified as Class I regardless of whether any illnesses have been confirmed.